Australian Football

Match Report

Adelaide's 2014 season is, while not quite back on track, at least heading in the right the direction after the Crows had a big win over St Kilda at Dockland stadium on Sunday afternoon. Going into the match without a win, Adelaide started the match brightly, kicking four goals to two in the first quarter and then extended its lead over each of the subsequent terms to record a massive 86-point win.

St Kilda's season, which started well with wins over Melbourne and GWS, is now trending downwards after losses to West Coast and the Crows,

The writing was on the wall early for the Saints with the Crows "up and about", scoring the first two goals of the match via Josh Jenkins and Eddie Betts. St Kilda looked like making a match of it when Rhys Stanley and Jack Steven (with a miraculous over-the-head bicycle-kick) goaled to bring the game back on level terms. But the Crows kicked the last two majors of the first term and the first four of the second to set the tone for the rest of the match. The hard work and running that had a been a feature of the Saints' first three games this year was sadly lacking for much of the match, a fact reflected in the final margin.

The architects of the win were Rory Sloane (30 disposals and nine marks), Scott Thompson (32 possessions, eight marks) and ruckman Sam Jacobs (39 hitouts, 22 disposals). For the Saints, captain Nick Riewoldt (12 marks, 23 disposals) was as inspirationally reliable as ever and received good support from fellow veterans Farren Ray (23 touches and seven marks) and Lenny Hayes (eight tackles, 24 possessions).

St Kilda will try and arrest its slide against Essendon at Docklands next Saturday night, while the Crows will be looking for their second win when they take on GWS at the Adelaide Oval earlier that day.

GOALS
St Kilda: Riewoldt 2; Stanley, Steven, Gwilt, Saunders, Savage
Adelaide: Jenkins 4; Podsiadly 3; Petrenko, Mackay, Wright 2; Betts, Crouch, Brown, Douglas, Dangerfield, Sloane, Kerridge

BEST - SPORTAL.COM.AU
St Kilda: Riewoldt, Ray, Hayes, Armitage, Dempster
Adelaide: Thompson, Jacobs, Smith, Sloane, Jenkins

BEST - AFL.COM.AU
St Kilda: Riewoldt, Dempster, Curren, Ray, Armitage, Hayes
Adelaide: Smith, Thompson, Mackay, Jenkins, Sloane, Rutten

COACHES' COMMENTS
Alan Richardson (StK): I don't know about the loss being a step back. As long as we learn from it. That's where we're at as a group. This is a journey that we're on as a team and as a club and we got taught a lesson today. The lesson was that if you don't turn up and give great effort then you're a chance to get badly beaten. We were disappointing in the contest; we fumbled. They were really clean.

Brenton Sanderson (Adel): Much better [than in the first three rounds]. It felt like that was us again, playing today. We've had a couple of challenging weeks and I guess it could have gone two ways today. Really happy that we played four quarters today. It's probably the first time for the season that we've won four quarters. We did the basics really well.

INJURIES
St Kilda: Nathan Wright (suspected fractured lower right leg), Armitage (concussion and leg)
Adelaide: Nil

SUBSTITUTES
St Kilda: Nathan Wright replaced by Josh Saunders in the second quarter
Adelaide: Ben Rutten replaced by Brodie Martin in the fourth quarter

UMPIRES: Burgess, Kamolins, Jeffery

TELEVISION BROADCAST: Seven Network

COMMENTATORS: Bruce McAvaney, Hamish McLachlan, Tim Watson, Andrew Welsh