After 3 quarters of pitiful, insipid and generally woeful football, the Crows put in a very good performance in the final quarter tonight. That's not to say that there's anything much in the way of positives to come out of the game - it was very much a case of shutting the gate after the horse had bolted (and was running free 10 miles down the road).
My question is what changed between the 3rd quarter and the 4th quarter, which turned things in our favour?
Obviously North took their foot off the pedal. I reject the assumption that they ran out of legs because of Hale's injury. Two or three such injuries can lead to that sort of problem, one injury barely changes the rotations at all. North led by 54 points and knew they had the game in the bag - as a result, they dropped their intensity by 3-5% and that was all it took.
The Adelaide players were all completely fresh going into the final term. It's not hard to understand why - most of them hadn't done a damn thing for 3 quarters, certainly they hadn't been running hard and/or chasing their opponents.
Fresh players + an opponent who took their foot off the pedal = turnaround.
What else, if anything changed? Apparently Craig didn't tell them to do anything different in his 3/4 time address, so we can assume that the changes didn't come from the coaches box - they must have come from the players on the ground.
My question is what changed between the 3rd quarter and the 4th quarter, which turned things in our favour?
Obviously North took their foot off the pedal. I reject the assumption that they ran out of legs because of Hale's injury. Two or three such injuries can lead to that sort of problem, one injury barely changes the rotations at all. North led by 54 points and knew they had the game in the bag - as a result, they dropped their intensity by 3-5% and that was all it took.
The Adelaide players were all completely fresh going into the final term. It's not hard to understand why - most of them hadn't done a damn thing for 3 quarters, certainly they hadn't been running hard and/or chasing their opponents.
Fresh players + an opponent who took their foot off the pedal = turnaround.
What else, if anything changed? Apparently Craig didn't tell them to do anything different in his 3/4 time address, so we can assume that the changes didn't come from the coaches box - they must have come from the players on the ground.