Australian Football

Match Report

The last Saturday match takes us to the western side of town now, into the Hisense Stadium in Richmond where the Bloods took on the Crows. It was back in Round 2 that these sides last met, with the Crows kicking the match winner early in time-on to nick the win by just one goal. A single missed opportunity by West only 80 seconds earlier may have just done it for them, but of course we'll never truly know what could have been. Since that time the Bloods would win just two games, though last week they fell to the previously equally luckless Bulldogs who they beat in Round 5. The Crows sat out Round 11, coming into this game with a 10-point win over the Blues at Oxford Terrace the previous weekend. 

The script read almost similarly to the battle at The Parade at the same time, with the Crows bursting out of the blocks and dominating the opening term and holding the Bloods scoreless. Adelaide scored 5.3 to lead by 33 points at quarter-time. Unlike the Dogs though, West didn't return serve in the second term, managing only 1.2 to the Crows' 2.2 in the second quarter, Adelaide's advantage stretched by a goal to 39 points going into the rooms at half-time. The Crows' tall timber were the ones doing the damage, the combined efforts of the talls in the ruck and up forward making life difficult. The Bloods started to work around that in the third term, but despite holding the Crows to 3.2, their own return of 5.1 only cut the gap down a fraction of what they would have liked. At three quarter-time, Adelaide's lead was still five straight kicks away at 28 points. And that was as close as it would ever be, the Crows putting an early end to any Westies' comeback in front of a very low gathering of fans. Less than a thousand had turned up as Adelaide scored 4.2 in the first 11 minutes to widen the gap to nine goals, the Bloods would cut that back to six goals by game's end after scoring 3.1 to one behind over the remaning time left. 

Billy Frampton kicked three goals and took 12 marks to be named Adelaide's best, the Bloods named Elliot Dunkin as their best with 35 disposals and eight marks.