Josh Jenkins shrugs off Sydney’s Tom Papley en route to kicking a crucial last-quarter goal at the SCG. Photo: GETTY IMAGES
You can sometimes slice and dice statistics to suit any particular argument, but one doing the AFL rounds this week would certainly have been taken on board by half the competition.
Nine first-round losers wouldn’t have enjoyed hearing that over the last dozen AFL seasons, just four of 61 teams which have lost their first two games have been able to recover enough to reach finals.
Sure, Collingwood last year was a major exception, but a strike rate of 6.5 per cent is far from encouraging when it comes to the possibility of a repeat. Which made Friday night’s clash of two first-round losers Sydney and Adelaide at the SCG seem one for higher stakes than you might expect on the second weekend of a new football year.
And now it’s just the Swans’ problem after a vastly-improved Adelaide bowled them over by 26 points, Sydney’s fifth loss in its last six games at what was once a fortress.
In seven seasons from 2000 until 2006, there were nine teams who lost their first two games of a new football year but recovered strongly enough to reach finals. But in the dozen completed seasons since then, that’s been far from the case.
North Melbourne in 2007, Sydney in 2014 and 2017 and Collingwood last season have been the only teams to end up being part of September among no fewer than 61 which have gone winless in the first two rounds.
That’s an ominous strike rate of just over 6.5 per cent, the clear message that now, more than ever, a decent start is critical, a sobering statistic indeed for Carlton, Collingwood, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, West Coast, Gold Coast, Essendon and North Melbourne approaching the next few days.
You wouldn’t have given Sydney much home come quarter time of this game. Adelaide had had nearly twice as many forward entries, plenty more contested ball and tackles, and the run and ball-winning of Paul Seedsman and Brad Crouch was causing the Swans all sorts of problems.
More significantly than that, Adelaide was also 21 points up, and with 4.5 on the board, could have led by even more. Ben Ronke had kicked the first goal of the evening for the Swans, but after about 10 minutes the Crows really clicked into gear.
David Mackay snapped Adelaide’s first, and Taylor Walker had a second not two minutes later. Josh Jenkins bombed a beauty after a perfect lead and pass from teammate Rory Laird, then the Crows missed a couple more chances.
A potentially wasteful period of dominance was looking a lot better a couple of minutes later, though, after Seedsman let go with an enormous barrel after the siren from at least 60 metres out, Adelaide now 21 points up.
Sydney needed an immediate response. And it got one. From the very first bounce of the second term, the Swans won a clearance, pumped the ball into the teeth of goal, and second-game Nick Blakey dragged down a great mark, promptly converting.
The Crows pegged that back soon enough, but the Swans by now had not only redressed the disparity in those key stats, but themselves were starting to dominate.
An Adelaide howler helped their cause, Riley Knight centring a ball inside his defensive 50, an errant kick putting Daniel Talia under all sorts of pressure, Sam Reid wrapping the key defender up, winning a holding-the-ball decision and making no mistake with the kick.
Cue Lance Franklin for some inspiration, “Buddy” once again kicking one of “those” goals, taking the ball on the junction of the 50-metre arc and boundary line and letting go with a monster which faded beautifully right to left and bounced home.
He’d add another before half-time, too, along with Will Hayward, a run of four goals interrupted only by Brad Crouch’s inventive little snap through traffic, the midfielder clearly his side’s best player to the long break.
Sydney had taken control at the centre bounces, where Tom Papley and Isaac Heeney did some brilliant work. Now it was the Swans dominating the contested ball, 45-27 in the second term, and all but doubling Adelaide for inside 50s.
But if that gave the Swans all the momentum, it certainly petered out quickly. In fact, neither side had much to speak of in a third quarter which meandered along without much of substance happening at all after Crow Rory Atkins goalled in the first minute.
But importantly, Adelaide also got the only other two kicked in the term, Tom Lynch and Eddie Betts dragging the game from its torpor only in the last two minutes.
And by now, the Crows had all the answers. Will Hayward reduced the gap to only 17 points just a minute into the last quarter, but Josh Jenkins replied from the very next centre bounce. Franklin booted another of his specials from the junction of the 50-metre arc and boundary. This time, Adelaide answered with a brace of their own.
Now, the gap was the best part of five goals, and that was pretty much that.
It was a vastly-improved performance from the Crows, one off the back of a very consistent midfield, the Crouch brothers, Bryce Gibbs, Rory Sloane and Atkins all solid. The forward line ticked over nicely, Jenkins and Taylor Walker always dangerous, Betts relatively quiet again, but other ground level goalkickers emerging.
Sydney had big ball-winners in Josh Kennedy and Jake Lloyd, but a combined 70 possessions didn’t deliver the sort of opportunities you might expect in a forward set-up that, hardly for the first time, seemed to exemplify the “Buddy or bust” theory.
The Swans are in strife already. Can they recover? Well, those figures about two first-up losses might, perversely, offer some encouragement.
It’s been Sydney which has provided two of those four recent exceptions to the rule, in 2014, when they made a grand final, and most recently just two seasons ago when the Swans lost their first six games straight but still got there in the end.
They’re sizeable straws to be clutching at, though. Right now, some more pace, a higher skill level and a few more reliable goalkickers would be a lot more handy.
SYDNEY 1.2 6.6 7.10 8.14 (62)
ADELAIDE 4.5 6.10 9.15 12.16 (88)
GOALS – Adelaide: Knight 2, Mackay 2, Jenkins 2, Walker, Seedsman, B.Crouch, Atkins, Lynch, Betts. Sydney: Franklin 3, Hayward 2, Ronke, Blakey, Reid.
BEST – Adelaide: B.Crouch, Sloane, Atkins, Keath, Milera, Gibbs. Sydney: Kennedy, Parker, Lloyd, Franklin, Papley.
INJURIES – Nil.
UMPIRES: Meredith, Findlay, Fleer
CROWD: 32,575 at the SCG
