Adelaide will grit their tooth as they go on the street for the primary time in a month and sort out the AFL guests’ graveyard that’s Hawthorn in Launceston.
On paper, the Crows will begin scorching favourites after opening Gather Round with an excellent first quarter towards Carlton.
They have received their final three whereas the rebuilding Hawks pushed GWS on Sunday earlier than Harry Himmelberg’s late heroics condemned them to a good loss.
But there are many traps for the over-confident, given Adelaide have received solely as soon as in six visits to Launceston and have misplaced two of their final three towards Hawthorn.
They additionally head interstate after the luxurious of four-straight video games at Adelaide Oval.
The Crows’ most up-to-date go to to Launceston was a three-point loss to Hawthorn two seasons in the past.
So whereas coach Matthew Nicks speaks of wanting Adelaide to journey their new-found wave and keep their confidence, he additionally talked up the potential pitfalls of Sunday’s conflict.
“Sometimes it’s nice to come in where you haven’t won a game of football somewhere and we challenge the group,” Nicks mentioned on Thursday.
“Get them to grit their teeth – that’s what we’ll do this week.
“Hawthorn in Tasmania, it is a powerful, powerful sport. We’ve been discovered wanting the previous couple of instances we have come up towards them.
“Be flexible – we talk about it a lot, be ready. We’ve played the ground, we know what to expect.”
Adelaide are unlikely to make any modifications with Nicks speaking of possession being 9 tenths of the regulation after what he referred to as a “complete performance” towards Carlton.
“But we’re one game away from not performing,” Nicks mentioned.
Another potential challenge is their unusually lengthy 10-day break.
Adelaide solely had a five-day break heading into final week, which was made irrelevant once they steamrolled Carlton early.
The South Australians are operating out video games and quarters nicely, placing a give attention to their skilled health boss Darren Burgess.
The Crows got three days off after their final sport and Nicks mentioned this break had been managed rigorously.
“It’s actually tougher to manage the 10-day break than the five,” he mentioned.
“Other than the soreness you probably have going into a five-day break … the moment you run out in front of 50,000 on a Thursday night, the soreness goes to the back of the brain.
“A ten-day break is a problem as a result of they’re so finely tuned … the three-day break can typically make you are feeling such as you’re (extra sore).
“Today was a really important session for us. Hopefully you saw it, we crashed in … today was about cracking and getting ourselves back to speed,” he mentioned.
Nicks mentioned Hawthorn had been bettering and had began video games nicely.
While that they had been falling away within the third time period badly, Hawthorn rectified that towards GWS.
“We see some similarities to what we’ve been through and we know they’re going to bring an amazing contest.
“In the tip, (towards the Giants) they had been fairly stiff.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
