Touch of the Fumbles
In a final farewell to a less-than-stellar season from our Fumbles correspondent, we reveal exclusive, fly-on-the-wall details from a mid-season Adelaide Football Club crisis meeting.*
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.
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.
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 has been moved to pen an open letter to the great man himself.
I’ll be honest, this wasn’t as cathartic as I’d hoped.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
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.
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
Normal service has been resumed. The AFL is back, and so is our myopic, moping Touch Of The Fumbles correspondent. Port’s new recruits powered them to a big win while the Crows blew a handy lead to give up four points on the road. It could be a long year…
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
It wasn’t altogether easy, but you’ll be pleased to know that I have managed to find the single glaring negative to come out of the Crows’ Showdown mauling of an unaccountably insipid Port Adelaide.
Touch of the Fumbles
So where do we start? Adelaide’s crazy comeback draw? Port’s insane hijack win? The perpetual annoyance that is Paddy Dangerfield? Ahead of a ladder-shaping Showdown, this was a weekend that captured the best and the worst of both the Crows and the Power – which somehow leaves our Fumbles correspondent none the wiser.
Touch of the Fumbles
This could have been a Crows supporter’s ultimate football weekend: Adelaide won, Port lost and Richmond obligingly put a two-game break between us and the decreasingly-ominous GWS, while also bundling the Power out of the top four. Only an unexpected bout of appendicitis could stop us now…
The Crows are at the top end of the ladder after a visit to the Top End, but we’re all starting to get that familiar pre-break-up feeling again. But never fear. Our Fumbles correspondent is taking matters into his own hands, and he’s making Lever and McGovern an offer they can’t refuse.
Touch of the Fumbles
Despite fluctuating form, the Crows are somehow back on top of the ladder and widely expected to stay thereabouts by season’s end. Which, for some reason, has our Fumbles correspondent preoccupied with casual vandalism, late-night tequila binges and trawling through canine faeces, as the ghost of his least favourite season ever returns to haunt him.
Touch of the Fumbles
As ever in football, it looks good on paper: Adelaide found a way to win, while Port found a way to lose. But it’s neither a win, nor a loss – but a draw – that has our Fumbles correspondent fretting as the Crows enter a tough run home.
Touch of the Fumbles
The footy’s back, the Crows won – twice – and Port impressed against Sydney. But, hey: two out of three ain’t bad, as Touch Of The Fumbles returns for another season.
The footy is back – but not as we know it. Touch Of The Fumbles columnist Tom Richardson celebrates a history-making weekend and the novelty of a Crows win in the summer rain, as he ponders the future prospects of AFLW.
Touch of the Fumbles
After the Crows’ dizzying success in last week’s AFL trade period, InDaily can exclusively reveal this fly-on-the-wall account of the desperate efforts to keep Jarryd Lyons at the Adelaide Football Club.*
Touch of the Fumbles
The nation has been enraptured by the Cinderella tale of the Western Bulldogs, the AFL’s most unlikely premiers. But, in his final Touch Of The Fumbles for 2016, Tom Richardson spares a thought for the forgotten hero of the Grand Final.
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.
It wasn’t all beer, skittles and premierships in 1997.
The Crows’ winning streak is over, cruelled by a lacklustre third term and a sea of Corey Enrights. But Tom Richardson is looking on the bright side. After all, it could be worse. We could be Port Adelaide.
Of all the recollections of our enduring 300-game veteran Scott Thompson that suggested themselves this week, the one that reappeared to me from some long-banished recess of my subconscious occurred before he’d even pulled the boots on for Adelaide.
Touch of the Fumbles
There seems to have been some confusion about a few things. No-one said Paddy Dangerfield wasn’t a great player and a good bloke. It’s just that Tom Richardson doesn’t like him very much. And he also wants to clear up this misconception about how much the Crows have improved this year. But at least he’s still got Port to make him feel better.
So, it’s all the umpire’s fault, right? Well, not according to Tom Richardson, who says that, like Homer Simpson, the Crows should be strangling themselves – instead of opposition players. And this week there was not even the consolation of a Port loss to fall back on.
Touch of the Fumbles
Right, the Crows got a win. Now let’s never speak of it again.
Touch of the Fumbles
As the Prime Minister might say, there’s never been a more exciting time to play Fremantle. Yes, despite a heart-stopping loss, Tom Richardson is upbeat this week. But as the Divinyls (and Don Pyke) might say, there’s a fine line between pleasure and pain. Or not such a fine line, if you’re Port Adelaide.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
What light from yonder window breaks, asks Tom Richardson – it is the Adelaide Oval, and the Crows beating Collingwood is the sun.
Touch of the Fumbles
In his weekly AFL column, Tom Richardson writes the nicest things he will ever write about Port Adelaide – catch it while you can.
Get InDaily in your inbox. Daily. The best local news sent straight to your inbox every workday at lunchtime.
Thanks for signing up to the InDaily newsletter.
