Adelaide have ended their Collingwood hoodoo with a nerve-jangling three-point triumph to keep their grip on top spot.<\/p>\n
The Crows trailed by 25 points at quarter-time but prevailed 9.5 (59) to 8.8 (56) at Adelaide Oval on Saturday night – their first win against the Pies since 2016.<\/p>\n
Adelaide (68 premiership points) will finish first entering the finals if they defeat 17th-placed North Melbourne next Saturday.<\/p>\n
James Peatling of the Crows celebrates a goal.\u00a0Photo by James Elsby\/AFL Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Collingwood (60 points), with five losses from their past six games, are fourth and in a logjam jostling for positions ahead of their Friday-night fixture against Melbourne.<\/p>\n
The Crows had lost their past 10 games against Collingwood, preceded by a 2017 draw.<\/p>\n
But with victory before a sold-out crowd of 54,283 – the second-largest attendance at an AFL game at the oval – Adelaide equalled their club-best returns of 17 wins and five losses in 2005 and 2012 – a win over the Roos will create a new benchmark.<\/p>\n
The Crows were jumped by a fast-starting Collingwood, who produced a first-term blitz to create a 25-point quarter-time lead, 5.3 to 1.2.<\/p>\n
But Adelaide flipped the script in the second term, with ex-captain Taylor Walker kicking two of five unanswered goals for the hosts.<\/p>\n
A late strike from Izak Rankine gave Adelaide a five-point edge at halftime, 6.3 to 5.4.<\/p>\n
The third quarter, amid rain, was tight – neither team managed a goal until Adelaide’s Isaac Cumming scored in the 27th minute.<\/p>\n
But Pie forward Jamie Elliott replied, threading a set shot from an acute angle, to reduce Adelaide’s advantage to two points at three-quarter time, 7.6 to 6.8.<\/p>\n
Another scoring stalemate ensued in a tense finale: a goal-less 17-minute stretch was broken when Crow James Peatling snapped accurately.<\/p>\n
But Magpie Jack Crisp responded six minutes later to reduce the margin to three points.<\/p>\n
Key Crow Riley Thilthorpe then took a superb contested mark and converted.<\/p>\n
Again the Pies responded, with a long bomb from Nick Daicos leaving the visitors three points down, but Adelaide grimly held on for victory.<\/p>\n
Ex-Crow skipper Walker and Darcy Fogarty kicked two goals each, while defenders Josh Worrell (27 disposals), Mark Keane (23) and captain Jordan Dawson (23) were influential.<\/p>\n
Collingwood’s Nick Daicos was superb with a game-high 29 possessions and a goal.<\/p>\n
Veteran Scott Pendlebury (24 touches) was prominent, especially early, Darcy Cameron (23 disposals) ruled the rucks, and forwards Elliott and Tim Membrey booted two majors apiece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adelaide have ended their Collingwood hoodoo with a nerve-jangling three-point triumph to keep their grip on top spot.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-73706","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\/73706","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=73706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}