Wednesday, June 9, 2010

AFL Mid-season Review - Adelaide

OK its officially half way through the season, so, as promised here's the beginning of a team by team analysis of the year thus far, and what hope each team has to actually achieve anything

Adelaide 3-8 15th
OK, their season is shot, let's get that out of the way. They have been awful (and awfully disappointing). They lost their first 6 games, 4 of those were 40+ point losses and at that point their season was done. In 11 games they have lost to a bunch of average teams (those fighting for a spot in the 8) and a few decent ones that are pushing for an end of season berth in the top 4. The thing is they should have won most of those games based on preseason hype. Since their first 6 losses, they've actually been better, winning and losing alternately. Their best win was undoubtedly their last when they took out Freo (a genuine challenger) last week.

So why are they so bad? A few big reasons; injuries have unearthed depth issues on the list. They've lost a lot of good players for extended periods and haven't had a settled side and those they are bringing in are underdone or not yet (or perhaps ever) upto AFL standard. I like to call this the Hawthorn excuse, because its the key thing that crippled the Hawks in 2009. The next issue is that their old players, who all (barring Burton, who should not have been retained as he was old and coming off serious injury) showed great form last year, but Burton is injured and frankly gone, Edwards slowed and looked lost and is now gone, McLeod showed some signs, but he was only half the player he was, which leaves Goodwin, by far the best of the 4 who is still actually demanding a spot. Finally Neil Craig hasn't brought anything new to the table. Its essentially been the Crowbots of old, yet again. Tippet hasn't stood up as expected and that hasn't helped changing their style.

They are pretty much locked into a bottom 4 finish, and whilst they say this isn't the year to tank, I disagree. One spot above a rival means your draft order is two worse than it would be thanks to the Gold Coast. 13th-15th

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