New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\nThe resulting five-goal blast, with an Izak Rankine special the highlight, looked set to keep the Crows undefeated before the Dogs rallied with the last two goals of the contest to win by six points.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just were a bit slow to get going for whatever reason, we don\u2019t necessarily know yet what the reason was, but just to get ourselves up and firing took us too long,\u201d Nicks said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re probably lucky to be in it at halftime, when you think scoreboard, they were very good in the first half.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, contest? Smashed us in the tackle, beat us at ground ball, and that can be where we\u2019re a couple per cent off, for whatever reason it was disappointing that we put that first half out there.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in the end, you give yourself a chance, and it probably adds to the disappointment when you don\u2019t get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘Carry on from me’ – Laid on injury | 00:30<\/p>\n
\u201cYou find the front, but did we just leave it too late? You spend all your energy tickets in that last (quarter) doing everything you can, and then you can\u2019t quite hold on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWere we a little flat in that first half? You\u2019ve also got to look at our opposition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were very good in the first half and when a team\u2019s beating you up, which they did, that\u2019s the reality of it, they beat us to the contest, they beat us in the ground ball, there\u2019s things you\u2019re not getting right.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we\u2019ll go back and look through that, and they\u2019ll be reasonably simple \u2026 it\u2019s really our opposition worked a little harder than us in the first (half), they outnumbered us at balls, and they\u2019re very good with their hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you give them some time and space, it\u2019s the reason they\u2019re undefeated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beveridge: ‘A lot of mistakes!’ | 07:56<\/p>\n
The numbers tell the story of how Adelaide\u2019s quicker, more aggressive play in the second half flipped the script. But equally why their slow start was so costly.<\/p>\n
Their \u2018speed of ball movement\u2019 metrics were 36 and 60 respectively in the first and second quarters, compared to 118 and 116 respectively in the third and final stanza.<\/p>\n
Gaz gives update on Browny’s health | 01:00<\/p>\n
Hawks legend Jordan Lewis was critical of how passive Nicks\u2019 side played in the first half given \u201chigh-octane football\u201d has proven so key in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t watch the first three rounds of football, and then come out and play that way in the first half and think that style of football is going to get it done,\u201d Lewis said on Fox Footy post-match.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially in the first month, six weeks of football \u2014 it sort of seems like you need to play high-octane football. They showed that in the second half, when they were in the game. <\/p>\n
\u201cAlso what it does, is it energises the crowd. When you\u2019ve got a home crowd and you\u2019re chipping the ball around in your back half, the crowd aren\u2019t involved in the game. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to be able to feed off the crowd, you\u2019ve got to be able to play fast at times and excite, to then build the crowd up to get them involved in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rubbing salt into the wound for Adelaide was an injury to gun off-season recruit Callum Ah Chee, who aggravated a hamstring injury suffered in the pre-season State of Origin clash.<\/p>\n
Playing his first game after missing last season\u2019s finals series and round one through suspension, Rankine started slowly but kicked a brilliant goal to put his side in front with five minutes to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great to get him back out there,\u201d Nicks said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019d be the first one to say it wasn\u2019t necessarily his best (game). But what do you expect from a guy who played footy for so long?<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been chomping at the bit to play, so the nerves were there pre-game.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur expectation of him was just to come in and play his role. I think he had a few real key moments, which is typical Izak \u2026 he can do stuff that a lot of guys can\u2019t, and he\u2019ll be better for the run.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been leading off field, so it was a chance for him to get on field and get amongst it, which is good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew Nicks conceded Adelaide was slow to start, was outworked, and got beaten up before launching a stirring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[9126,638,64,63,55,639,16716,273717,38452,273689,13213,1127,93961,273716,24575,95042,19052,19080,16712,183048,668,273718,273720,273690,85,273719,698],"class_list":["post-553772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-adelaide-crows","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-ball-movement","tag-blunt-home-truth","tag-bogey-side","tag-brain-scare","tag-finals-series","tag-fox-footy","tag-ground-ball","tag-high-octane-football","tag-home-crowd","tag-jason-phelan","tag-jonathan-brown","tag-jordan-lewis","tag-matthew-nicks","tag-off-season-recruit","tag-press-conference","tag-real-key-moments","tag-resulting-five-goal-blast","tag-rory-laid","tag-sports","tag-stirring-last-quarter-fightback","tag-western-bulldogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553772","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=553772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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