Touch of the Fumbles
Our Fumbles correspondent returns to ponder the scant consolations of the Crows’ worst ever year (hint: they have a bit to do with Port Adelaide and Patrick Dangerfield).
Touch of the Fumbles
Port fell at the final hurdle in heartbreaking fashion. Which our Fumbles correspondent takes no pleasure in whatsoever. Not at all. In any way. Really.
A Crows drugs scandal, an unwanted anniversary and a Port finals win, all in the same week? That sounds like grounds for our Fumbles correspondent to make a rare Friday appearance.
The Crows were robbed, then capitulated – while Port gears up for a crack at a premiership that absolutely, positively, definitely won’t count. The AFL ladder proves it: 2020 really is the End Of Days.
So, it turns out we’re not the worst team in 56 years after all.
A one-off edition, for our one-off win – as the Crows finally sang the song for the first time this decade. Sometimes it’s the little things.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
There would be a poetic aptness to the Shitshow that is 2020 – a year of pandemic peril, civil unrest and lunatic leadership – if it also conspires to end with a Port Adelaide premiership.
The football’s back – and just like that, it’s gone again. Our Fumbles correspondent tries to make sense of a predictable Crows loss – amid the game’s most unpredictable predicament.
Touch of the Fumbles
A final Fumbles farewell for a year that promised fun and flags, but delivered yet more folly, failure and fetid fallout. Some of the Crows’ biggest names have gone, and a new era awaits – under a former Port mentor, no less. So, an uneventful few weeks then…
Touch of the Fumbles
Our long-suffering Fumbles correspondent makes what Jimi Hendrix might have called a “slight return”, after Adelaide’s now-traditional off-season chaos culminated in the somewhat battered Pyke Cart trundling off into the western sunset.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Let’s be honest, if you could distil the essence of a good weekend of AFL football in 2019, it would contain three basic ingredients: Adelaide winning, Port losing and Carlton consolidating their tenure at the bottom of the ladder.
Touch of the Fumbles
So… who do we like in the draft at number two?
Touch of the Fumbles
I think we can all accept that Adelaide should have lost on Saturday night.
In a week in which Adelaide’s selection decisions caused as much debate as the Crows’ lacklustre fadeout at home, our Fumbles correspondent wrestles with the prospect that Carlton’s consistent crappiness might be the only thing keeping our season’s prospects alive.
Touch of the Fumbles
I can kind of empathise with the Labor Party after Saturday.
Touch of the Fumbles
An unusual AFL season has thrown up the most unlikely of scenarios: after a Showdown win, another Carlton loss and the Crows’ mad scramble up the ladder, for the first time in a long time our Fumbles correspondent has nothing whatsoever to complain about.
Touch of the Fumbles
The dwindling hopes of Crows supporters have yet again proved vain, and our Fumbles correspondent is back – and searching for consolations. There aren’t many to be had, but that could change this week…
The ‘Sloane-spired’ Crows kept their faint finals hopes alive after achieving the unthinkable – re-signing a marquee player. It’s a phenomenon so rare that your Fumbles correspondent was moved to pen an open letter to the great man himself.
Touch of the Fumbles
I’ll be honest, this wasn’t as cathartic as I’d hoped.
Touch of the Fumbles
Was this the win to put Adelaide’s season back on track, or the Crows’ ‘fake encore’ – a crowd-pleasing rendition of an old favourite before the final curtain? At this point, our Fumbles correspondent doesn’t really care – because it was, at least a win. And it’s been a while.
It was the greatest finish to a Showdown ever. Except that it hadn’t finished yet. Yes, Robbie Gray, Steven Motlop and Co. combined to ruin what was shaping up to be a super Saturday, and your Fumbles correspondent seems to be taking things very hard.
High-flying marks, strange industrial-grey guernseys and another injury that may or may not rhyme with “jam spring”… As the Showdown looms, our Fumbles correspondent ponders whether the Crows might actually be building to something here – or merely marking time before more September sorrow.
There’s something unreasonably satisfying about cultivating a newfound hatred for a team about which you were previously indifferent.
Few gave the Crows any chance to win this one, least of all our Fumbles correspondent. But in the end, a narrow against-the-odds win on the road – led by a four-goal captain’s haul – felt like a little bit of history repeating. Much like yet another Port loss to Geelong.
Port bombing out to the Bombers and a Jake Lever shocker slightly redeemed the weekend, but there’s no papering over how poor the Crows were on Friday night. Our Fumbles correspondent ponders curfews, baby blues and the end of the premiership dream.
Touch of the Fumbles
There are moments that have always stuck in my mind from the Crows’ 2006 preliminary final loss to West Coast, which still ranks as the worst defeat I’ve endured as an Adelaide supporter.
When you actually stop and think about it, Port’s heartbreaking exit after an epic draw-into-extra-time elimination final wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t put in such a relatively half-arsed effort against the Eagles in Round 23.
Touch of the Fumbles
The finals are finally here. Well, almost. Which means it’s time for a key Adelaide midfielder to get hit with an unforeseen medical emergency. After all, as our Fumbles correspondent observes, we’d hate to break with tradition, wouldn’t we?
Touch of the Fumbles
The Crows have roared into the minor premiership on the back of two stirring losses to end the 2017 season. It’s the perfect cue for a heady mix of wistful hope and gloomy cynicism. Fortunately, our Fumbles correspondent is well-practised.
Touch of the Fumbles
It was as convincing a win as an unconvincing win can be, and our Fumbles correspondent is looking on the bright side. After all, there are worse teams to support than flat track bullies.
As Oscar Wilde would have probably written if he’d had the misfortune to be an Adelaide Crows supporter: To lose one game against a middle-rung opponent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
Touch of the Fumbles
Normal service was resumed on the weekend, as the Crows reverted to type by failing spectacularly to live up to the hype. Fortunately, so did almost every other contender – including Port. And despite the crushing disappointment, our Fumbles correspondent is, perversely, looking on the bright side.
Touch of the Fumbles
If you were one of those annoying people who just want to see the South Australian-based teams doing well, you would have been pretty damn happy with the weekend’s football.
Touch of the Fumbles
The Crows dropped their bundle on Friday, and have now dropped out of the top four on the eve of the finals. That means it’s time for Adelaide supporters to wallow in self-pity, Port fans to become insufferably smug and Tom Richardson to vent.
Tom Richardson reflects on Showdown 41. In which Port Adelaide threw a proverbial banana skin and one of its supporters threw a literal banana. Guess which one we’re all talking about today?
Touch of the Fumbles
Port’s season is over, but with the Showdown looming, Tom Richardson is tempering his ebullience. A bit. Although, he argues, a loss for the Crows in the coming fortnight could be a blessing in disguise.
Touch of the Fumbles
The Crows beat Brisbane with the highest score of the season, the Lions’ second biggest defeat ever and Adelaide’s equal-second highest winning margin. So here are a few things that annoyed Tom Richardson.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Football
Touch of the Fumbles
