AFL
Daniel Brettig, Assistant editor, ESPNcricinfo 7y

Dominant Adelaide Crows impose their house rules

AFL

"Our house, our rules."

It's a refrain the Adelaide AFLW coach Bec Goddard can be heard uttering when revving up her players for a home game during the documentary Heroes. The intent is clear - at home, the game is played on the terms of the host.

This week, the Crows' men's coach Don Pyke echoed the sentiment, albeit in his more collected, geo-science expert kind of way: "We've created this opportunity and now it's about taking it. We need to stay true to the way we want to play."

While many had been preoccupied with the Crows' choice of stance for the national anthem, for Adelaide under Pyke that means to be tough in the contest, but clean in possession, aggressive in transition and above all fast. Fast to give the league's most potent forward line the best chance possible, and fast to give opponents no respite - to run them off their feet. Usually, that speed is built up from half-back, capitalising on balls won or turned over in the Adelaide defence.

On a night that began with the sort of warm spring sting so redolent of finals but later gave way to some rain, the Crows put their stamp on Adelaide Oval as their house in a way that will stay with all the 53,817 spectators present. At a stroke, 20 years without an AFL grand final appearance were forgotten, but the restorative influence of the late coach Phil Walsh was remembered. Back-to-back premiers in 1997 and 1998, the Crows can win both women's and men's titles in the first year of asking.

In a contest between two sides who had won every game in which they led at quarter-time, the Crows stole the critical early march. In fact, it appeared they were a chance of settling the outcome inside a quarter. The Crows won their share of the ball, but without needing a major statistical differential they were able to attack with the sort of precision to cut any side to ribbons. Though missing Brodie Smith, recipient of the sort of horridly timed knee injury with which Bob Murphy is well familiar, Adelaide's movement from the back was supreme.

Within this passage the Crows' forward pressure was underlined by Charlie Cameron, who pressed Harry Taylor into scrambling the ball out of bounds in the left forward pocket and helped his forward offsider Eddie Betts to a deliberate out of bounds free kick that he made use of with a typical, curling shot. In another era, Taylor's defensive action might have been lauded, but the Crows are very much a team of 2017, taking advantage of the premium the AFL has placed on keeping the ball alive - perpetual motion, always attractive, is very much their preferred mode of play.

It was around this time that Scott Selwood left the ground to have his left hamstring strapped. Geelong's challenge was already ailing, with the previous week's "masterstroke" by Chris Scott, moving Patrick Dangerfield to full forward, did not survive as far as time-on in the first quarter. Scott, presented by Adelaide's tide, was limited in his options, left to hope that his midfield could win enough ball to chip into a margin that stretched out to 48 points early in the second.

For a time, the Cats did manage to close things up through their sheer industry in the middle, winning a succession of centre clearances to pull the margin back to less than five goals. Crows supporters old enough to remember a 42-point halftime margin lost to Essendon in the 1993 preliminary final clenched their AFL Records a little more tightly than usual, before the moment arrived that summed up another element of Adelaide's "house rules".

Physical courage is another tenet of the Crows' way, epitomised by no-one more than Rory Sloane, he of the shuddering concussion against Melbourne that he recovered from in time to play against, you guessed it, Geelong. In the two years since Dangerfield's departure it has been Sloane to step up as much as anyone, coming to be rated one of the league's leading midfielders. With the Cats having cut the margin back, they had worked it forward once more when Sloane and Dangerfield both saw nothing but the ball. their collision was undoubtedly fair, and neither man made any sort of effort to cover themselves, let alone flinch.

While Dangerfield was left flat on his back, and needed to go off for a time, Sloane dusted himself off and was up to fight out the next contest. From that collision and spillage, Adelaide moved the ball upfield inside the final minute of the half, allowing Andy Otten - a linkup inclusion to cover for the hamstrung Mitch McGovern - to kick the goal that settled nerves on both sides of the fence.

From there, the Crows were held to a third-term wrestle by the Cats, but very much on their terms. Cameron's game continued to evolve into the sort of performance to mark a truly emerging AFL talent, summed up when his adroit play on and goal from the pocket earlier graced by Betts', brought the older man to his excited feet on the Adelaide bench. For a Geelong side that needed to get close enough in the third to attack in the fourth, a quarter in which the margin did not move was tantamount to a loss.

Six-goal last term margins are not the kind often coughed up, and so it was that the Crows carried on. Cameron's goal tally soared to five, Rory Laird, Matt and Brad Crouch monopolised the ball, Sam Jacobs excelled in the ruck, and the captain Taylor Walker put the exclamation points on a previously quiet night by firing through a pair of his own goals.

The margin blew out to 61 points, and the crowd were able to anticipate the moment with a rare level of comfort. That, of course, did little to reduce the excitement at the siren, when the oval's western stand shook with tumultuous noise. This, then, is Adelaide's house. On Friday night, they advanced to the Grand Final by their rules.

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