Where most saw a brutal early schedule, Adelaide veteran Rory Laird saw opportunity.<\/p>\n
An away game against Collingwood at the MCG, followed by Friday night’s home clash against the Western Bulldogs, is a perfect chance to repair his club’s finals credentials, Laird says.<\/p>\n
Adelaide exited last year’s finals with consecutive home losses but prevailed in their season-opener — a confidence-boosting 13-point win against the Pies.<\/p>\n
“If you look at a finals-like atmosphere, you get Collingwood at the ‘G first game — there’s 62,000 (spectators) on a Saturday night,” Laird told reporters on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“You go: that’s a good stepping stone.<\/p>\n
“Then you get Friday night back out here against arguably the hottest team in the competition.<\/p>\n
“So it’s just repetition and getting experience in that.<\/p>\n
Rory Laird, Taylor Walker, and Wayne Milera celebrate Adelaide’s win over Collingwood.\u00a0Photo by Michael Willson\/AFL Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n
“I know other guys have touched on the finals and all that, but we have moved on.<\/p>\n
“We have learnt from that and now hopefully you can see the progression in that sort of space.”<\/p>\n
The Crows were cognisant of the challenge presented by hosting the Dogs, who have banked two impressive wins: an opening five-point away triumph against reigning premiers Brisbane, followed by an 81-point hammering of GWS.<\/p>\n
Central to Adelaide’s planning will be curtailing brilliant Bulldogs skipper Marcus Bontempelli and attacking twin towers Sam Darcy and Aaron Naughton.<\/p>\n
“There’s only so much you can prepare for those kind of guys, they’re always going to have their imprint in the game,” Laird said.<\/p>\n
“(Ed) Richards, Tim English — you can probably pretty name much half their team as you go.<\/p>\n
“These guys are all stars, so massive respect for the Dogs and what they do and they’re in some great nick at the moment.”<\/p>\n
But Laird said the comeback of dynamo Izak Rankine, who has served his four-game ban for a homophobic slur, was a massive boost for the Crows.<\/p>\n
“The thing with Ranks is, he has put in a mountain of work and he’s actually super-fit, his tank is really, really good endurance-wise,” he said.<\/p>\n
“And I know how excited he is.<\/p>\n
“It’s always hard, the first three or four rounds to sort of get your legs, but a massive inclusion for us.<\/p>\n
“Obviously he’s a superstar and bit of a barometer for us; he brings a lot of energy so it’s exciting to be back alongside him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Where most saw a brutal early schedule, Adelaide veteran Rory Laird saw opportunity. An away game against Collingwood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-549826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}