Notes on Adelaide
In today’s Notes On Adelaide, the fraught Liberal preselection in Waite sinks into deeper controversy, as the president of the party’s local branch slams one of its prospective candidates, while another hopeful breaks bread with the seat’s shunned incumbent.
Touch of the Fumbles
Our Touch Of The Fumbles correspondent returns to the field for an AFL season postscript as the Crows unusually walk away from a 2021 contest with a win – albeit at the trade table.
While the Crows mop up after another inauspicious season, the Power are on the charge. Our Fumbles correspondent is still looking for a bright side – but he’s running out of ideas.
There was something quite symbolic about the final game of the final round of the AFL season, in which the Adelaide Football Club farewelled the past and ushered in the future in a spectacle that was sometimes dazzling, sometimes frustrating and at all times of precisely zero interest or relevance to almost everyone else.
It hasn’t been a good year: the world has gone to hell in a handbasket and the Crows are once again down the bottom of the ladder – albeit not quite bad enough to snare the best young SA talent of his generation. All this, though, our Fumbles correspondent can handle – but there’s one looming prospect he can’t abide.
It’s been a bruising few days that have prompted many to question their relationship with the Adelaide Football Club. As the song almost said: let’s talk about Tex.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Yes, the Crows might have lost to one of the most triggering teams in the AFL, and Port may have surprised no-one with a solid win at home against an average side, but our Fumbles correspondent is looking on the proverbial ‘Brightside’ as he grapples with an uncomfortable realisation.
There are few things better in football than your team getting up by a single point – unless of course your team is Port, in which case it’s just annoying and a bit unoriginal. Our Fumbles correspondent revisits a remarkable weekend – and one of the longest final minutes ever played.
Touch of the Fumbles
I’ve never quite hated West Coast as much as I should.
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.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
If your enemy’s enemy is truly your friend, then Friday night’s preliminary final between Port and Richmond is a tantalising quandary for long-suffering Crows supporters.
Touch of the Fumbles
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.
Touch of the Fumbles
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.
Touch of the Fumbles
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
A few days ago a daily newspaper published its own open letter to AFL boss Gillon McLachlan to put the case for Adelaide Oval to host the 2020 AFL Grand Final. Well, allow our Fumbles correspondent to retort.
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…
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
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.
Touch of the Fumbles
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.
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.
So… who do we like in the draft at number two?
I think we can all accept that Adelaide should have lost on Saturday night.
Touch of the Fumbles
Sure, the Crows look a shadow of their former selves and played so poorly we can’t even really revel much in Port’s shock loss or Carlton’s last-gasp bid to give us pick one in the draft… but our Fumbles correspondent is still scratching for positives.
The Crows were well and truly pantsed by the visiting Cats, but our Fumbles correspondent has found a few bright spots amid the gloom of a despondent Round Three AFL outing.
Touch of the Fumbles
There was much for our Fumbles correspondent to like, but a frenetic weekend of football was also tinged with heartbreak, as the Adelaide Football Club did more than just win a flag – it planted one, seizing the territory upon which a still-fledgling league can grow.
Touch of the Fumbles
Are we having fun yet? Our Touch Of The Fumbles correspondent certainly isn’t – as he returns for a season he was sure would see the Crows fly and the Power fail… to find that things haven’t quite followed the script.
Touch of the Fumbles
I’m not angry, just disappointed. Oh, and also angry.
The Crows almost drowned in a Friday downpour after the weather forecast turned out to be as reliable as their Injury Updates, but they still managed to keep their season afloat… while Port ground out a predictable win in one of the season’s more forgettable games – but luckily it was only seen by 10 million or so people. Your Fumbles correspondent ponders communist dictatorships, constitutional monarchies and other big questions of the round.
Touch of the Fumbles
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.
Touch of the Fumbles
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.
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?
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
Having spent the entire season being despondent despite Adelaide’s sparkling form, our Fumbles correspondent is today perversely upbeat about the weekend’s loss to Sydney. For now, at least.
Touch of the Fumbles
The Crows have sewn up a top two berth: the fabled Premiership primer of a home final and double chance. Our slightly worse-for-wear Fumbles correspondent would say nothing could go wrong from here… but for the fact that it usually does.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
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Touch of the Fumbles
I’m sure there was a moment – I’m guessing sometime early in the second term on Friday night – when Paddy suddenly felt that nagging, distantly-familiar feeling that he was destined to be the standout player in a losing side.
So it turns out away semi-finals are not really our thing.
Touch of the Fumbles
While the rest of Adelaide may be back on the Crows bandwagon, Tom Richardson still has plenty of concerns. Chief among them, is Kurt Tippett’s absence a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? And is “sudden-death final” an acceptable excuse for missing a pre-planned 40th birthday bash?
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.
