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Touch of the Fumbles
Touch Of The Fumbles: Regrets, we have a few
If I was Port Adelaide, I would simply have used my last two shots at goal last night to score 12 points instead of one.
Touch of the Fumbles
If I was Port Adelaide, I would simply have used my last two shots at goal last night to score 12 points instead of one.
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Touch of the Fumbles
It may have been against the world’s worst AFL side, but the Crows got a win yesterday – which, considering the alternative, is absolutely fine with our Fumbles correspondent.
It’s been six weeks since we last tasted victory. And to be frank, it doesn’t taste as sweet as I remember.
For a moment it seemed like pure poetry: a comeback was on the cards at the Cattery and all was right with the world. At least until Geelong piled on seven of the next eight goals.
How great is it to see a rebuilding team clicking into gear to defeat a genuine top four contender? Our Fumbles correspondent has no idea, but would love to find out one day.
The Crows’ sponsorship deal with a crypto company was on full display at Adelaide Oval on the weekend, and the home team duly honoured the arrangement by crashing inexplicably.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
As the broader AFL season explodes in off-field politics and COVID mayhem, the Adelaide Football Club appears doomed to see out the remaining rounds in a tedious spiral of inexorable mediocrity. Just in time for our second annual grudge match with the most annoying team in the world.
At long last, the Crows got a win. And in true Adelaide style, it was a victory that could yet do more harm than good.
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In the second instalment of the top 50 Showdown moments – from 40 to 31 – South Australia’s best football journalist, Michelangelo Rucci, and the state’s favourite grumpy Crows columnist, Touch of the Fumbles (aka Tom Richardson) debate the pressing issues.
Touch of the Fumbles
In these pandemic times, I sometimes lie awake at night pondering the big issues of the age.
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Touch of the Fumbles
Ok, before we get too caught up about who won the Showdown, remember that the important thing is that all the players had a fun time.
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Touch of the Fumbles
It’s a bad week to be a Crows supporter, but fortunately our crosstown rivals are doing their utmost to cheer us up. At least, for now…
Touch of the Fumbles
It was a loss that captured the best and – typically – the worst of the Adelaide Football Club Experience, but our Fumbles correspondent is uncommonly upbeat. For he has seen The Future on a breezy field in Tasmania – and its name is Riley Thilthorpe.
I think it was King George V who summed it up best when he uttered his famous refrain (and I may be paraphrasing here): “Bugger.”
Touch of the Fumbles
A big week for the Crows – the women’s team made another Grand Final, while the men somehow managed not to lose to the worst team in the AFL. Which, given the recent history of both, was probably the more surprising of the two.
Touch of the Fumbles
A rare midweek Fumbles to celebrate an event two years in the making. That magical confluence of results – an Adelaide win, and a Port loss. And if that wasn’t enough, Brad Crouch’s St Kilda debut went arse-up. All of which is nearly enough to have your Fumbles correspondent believing in miracles.
Touch of the Fumbles
There was good news and bad news this week: as usual, the bad news centred on the perpetually-frustrating Crows, who excelled themselves with two losses in five days. But the good news? Welcome back, Port Adelaide circa 2019!
Winless for a full 12 months, the Crows have evidently embraced the ‘end of the world as we know it’ aesthetic of 2020 – leaving our Fumbles correspondent to reflect on happier times, when his team was merely endearingly frustrating.
Touch of the Fumbles
It is truly the worst of times: a resurgent Port dominated while the Crows tried to make sense of their game plan using inanimate objects, which still looked more imposing than most of our players – and even the final scoreline seemed to be telling us something. But what?
Touch of the Fumbles
The Crows came close, but just couldn’t get over the line. Which is just fine by our unusually upbeat Fumbles correspondent.
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…
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.
Onfield malaise and off-field chaos: it’s fair to say 2019 didn’t quite pan out as our Fumbles correspondent had hoped, as we say a not-so-fond farewell to another wasted season.
So this is the way the season ends – not with a bang… but an utterly shiteful embarrassment of a home-ground capitulation, made only slightly less apocalyptic by Port Adelaide’s own subsequent annihilation. Good times.
Touch of the Fumbles
Sometimes during the football season, your weekend is pretty much ruined from the get-go.
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.
Touch of the Fumbles
Disappointingly, the Crows had a win yesterday, potentially derailing their 2018 strategy of chasing high draft picks. But our Fumbles correspondent is mightily consoled by the curious case of Port Adelaide, whose swift fall from flag fancy to flop has quickly become the season’s great feelgood story.
Sure, Adelaide’s season is so shot that even Don Pyke is finally conceding the finals, but your Fumbles correspondent is unusually upbeat. After all, we can finally talk about ‘that time McGovern kicked a goal against Port to hit the front in the last minute’ – without cringing.
Touch of the Fumbles
It was the perfect Showdown finale: a contentious goal, a Crows win and Port throwing their toys out of the proverbial cot. For our long-suffering Fumbles correspondent, what loomed as a scant consolation for a wasted year has instead become the undisputed highlight of Adelaide’s season – one that could yet have a major bearing on Port’s 2018 fortunes.
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…
Touch of the Fumbles
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
I’ve never really disliked St Kilda as much as I probably should.
Touch of the Fumbles
If there’s a single feeling in football sweeter than winning a Grand Final rematch, I can’t think of it.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
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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.
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
It’s a noisy place to belong – on the Crows’ bandwagon, where the revellers sing and the hamstrings ‘ping’. But even more frightening for our Fumbles correspondent than a burgeoning injury list and Rory Atkins’ hair is the ominous prospect that Port Adelaide appear finals-bound…
Touch of the Fumbles
This is going to get fairly tedious fairly quickly if things keep going as they are.
