No Gawn, no worries: Wet footy and hardened Demons expose Bombers

I think there were a lot of things. Number one, we got across the contest and won the ball. It doesn’t matter how you’re moving the ball if you can’t get it you can’t move it the right way. I thought, the method that we wanted to move the ball inside 50 given the conditions, which w didn’t adhere to. That was the most disappointing part of the night for me. That should be pretty simple. We didn’t do it. The first time I think I can say that in 18 months.

How did you see the ruck battle without Max Gawn tonight?

Well, I mean, a lot of contests, a lot of stoppages. Clearly, we had ascendency in the ruck. I have to breakdown the clearance numbers a little bit more in detail. It wasn’t like - you look at the contest, they won pre-clearance ground ball around the contest, which I’ve spoken about. But then we won it post the clearance then we won it post the clearance the ground ball. But it was probably the ground ball. It wasn’t inside players, it was more their peripheral players that were clearing the ball. First possession is even. That’s the sort of, in those sort of conditions that’s what you expect. The big part of the game, for us, was that we had ruck dominance. It wasn’t first possession that was an issue. It was more when the ball spilled around the contest they were first to it. Then when we were first to it, to their credit, their pressure was right on us. Didn’t allow us to move the ball we wanted to.

Different. It’s unpredictable for us. It’s unpredictable for the opposition. When you don’t have a dominant ruckman like Max, you play a bit differently for the opposition. That gave us an opportunity to do that. We always went in with a plan to share the load with Petty, van Rooyen and Turner. That was just finding out what was going to work for us on the night. I thought they did a great job. It’s something that obviously we had to deal with, missing Max. We’ll continue to find different ways to do it. As long as Max is out of the team we’ll continue to keep every option available to us every week. Obviously Tom was there and we’ve got the boys tonight. We’ll look at those guys again this week.

Pretty influential first quarter from Draper. How important when van Rooyen went into the ruck with the large share in the rest of the game?

It was important. Jacob has done a fair bit of ruck work before. Obviously, we wanted to get him in the forward line as much as we could. The night demanded that we needed him up around the ball a little more than we had planned. He did a fantastic job in the second quarter to help us just get the game on an even keel for us. I thought by the end of the game, both Petty and van Rooyen were doing a great job for us.

Jake Melksham, he seems to ease the pressure on Bayley Fritsch who can excel as well?

He’s coming in. He’s a leader. I spoke about him last week. He’s a leader of our football club. He hasn’t missed a beat since he came back. He did a power of work to get in that position. He’s good in the air and on the ground. He provides a stability for us, that a lot of younger players and front half of the ground to lead them and give them an opportunity. He’s doing a fantastic job for us.

You found something in the last fortnight with the forward nicks being more mobile. Is that a noticeable difference?

Probably the last eight weeks. We’re building cohesion. Melksham is the only change we’ve had to the front half of the ground. We’re able to play Turner, van Rooyen and Fritsch with a good chunk of game. Cohesion is big in sport. To play that group together you can see them evolve and grow together. Which is exciting for our football club. It’s been an area of the ground that we wanted to keep working and getting better at. We think we’ve got some talls and mediums that win the ball in the air. Also at ground level.

Any concerns over coughing up those last four goals of the game?

I don’t like it as a coach. But there’s no concerns. We just lost contest and lost centre bounce. We didn’t play safe. We continued to try and play the right way. And win the game. Clearly, Essendon were rolling the dice in terms of how they wanted to play forward of the ball. Credit to our boys. We kept playing. We didn’t get it on the scoreboard that we would have liked. We walk away with a good win.

Any injuries?

Pretty sure we’re all-clear at this stage. You never know what Monday might throw up. At the moment we’re all-

Any updates on Max Gawn?

He’s progressing well. We’re not going to put a time limit on it. We’re not sure. But he did have a good couple of days last few days. We’ll assess him mid week and see where he’s at. We’ll make that call later in the week.

Riley’s Return

Question marks were raised when the Crows named 201cm Riley Thilthorpe as their substitute ahead of the wet-weather slog, but the risk would pay dividends. Back for his AFL game of 2024 following a pre-season knee injury, Thilthorpe started with a deft, ground-level spin and pick-up more reminiscent of a smaller, more nimble player.

Sporting a shaggy beard and a massively bulked-up physique since his last senior appearance, Thilthorpe subbed in for Elliott Himmelberg at three-quarter-time and repaid the faith of the selectors, ragdolling Dougal Howard to mark Taylor Walker’s deep entry, kicking truly and celebrating wildly as every teammate made a bee-line for him. Three minutes later the big man had two goals on the board after converting a free kick against Howard. Thilthorpe is going to be a huge problem for opposition teams going forward.

Marvellous Matteas

After his career-best breakout performance in last week’s shock win over Sydney, St Kilda midfielder Matteas Philippou continued his purple patch with another strong performance against Adelaide.
The South Australian product from Woodville-West Torrens was arguably best-afield in the opening term, wreaking havoc with his cleanness and workrate at the stoppages. Philippou’s best moment came in the third-quarter slog when he broke a 23-minute goalless stalemate by threading through a magnificent, boundary-hugging major from the left-forward pocket, which trimmed the Crows’ lead to one point. That was as close as it got for the Saints, who failed to add another goal to their tally after Philippou’s classy strike.

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