Touch of the Fumbles
Touch Of The Fumbles: A Rational Hatred
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
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
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…
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.”
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.
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.
It hardly bears pointing out, but Port Adelaide look really pretty ok this year.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
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.
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
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.
Touch of the Fumbles
Editor’s note: Due to a technical breakdown, a significant portion of Adelaide Football Club senior coach Don Pyke’s post-match press conference after the Crows’ loss to West Coast last night never went to air. Here is a transcript of the lost broadcast.
Touch of the Fumbles
You can just see where this is heading, can’t you?
The Crows built up their season with constant reference to ‘the F-word’ – fun. But after their miserable 2019 campaign hit its lowest ebb on Saturday, your Fumbles correspondent can think of another F-word to better describe where they’re at.
Touch of the Fumbles
I’m just gonna go out on a limb and say it: I reckon we’re losing to Carlton this week.
Touch of the Fumbles
Was this the greatest single day in the history of world sport?
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.
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.
I’ll be honest, this wasn’t as cathartic as I’d hoped.
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’s apt that the Crows have chosen their bye-week to wave ‘bye-bye’ to their increasingly wretched season. Fans want answers, and our Fumbles correspondent has found them – in the form of an incredible, never-before-seen spray from an architect of Adelaide’s premiership double.
The Crows are in freefall, as the almost-champs of 2017 risk becoming the chumps of 2018. And, to add insult to considerable injury, Port have knocked off the reigning premiers and are primed for a dream run to September. It’s enough to summon our Fumbles correspondent back from his own mid-season malaise to find some consolation in retail therapy.
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
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.
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…
Touch of the Fumbles
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
Amid all the April Fools Day tomfoolery, a casual observer could have been forgiven for laughing off a match report of the Crows’ drought-breaking win over Hawthorn as yet another piece of fake news.
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.
Touch of the Fumbles
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
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
Touch of the Fumbles
We’ve been avoiding it for a couple of weeks now.
Richmond is the South Australian Liberal Party of the AFL. Discuss.
Touch of the Fumbles
The Crows won, Port lost – and both at the same time. And Paddy Dangerfield’s Cats went cold to boot. Who said a week wasn’t a long time in football? Certainly not Tom Richardson.
Touch of the Fumbles
The Crows lost, Port won and Paddy Dangerfield played a personal best against the reigning premiers. That sounds like a cue for Tom Richardson to return for another season of grumbles – and Fumbles.