By ANDREW JARMAN
22may06
I'VE had two days to digest Adelaide's performance and what I witnessed, as a football purist, was . . . BORING, BORING BORING.
It was undoubtedly the most boring game of Australian Rules footy I've seen in the past 25 years.
It was so bad I even went outside to clean the gutters of my little house. It's happened to all senior coaches, including me, and, I'm telling 'ya, Craigy, the mastermind, was out-foxed.
Terry Wallace dismantled the Crows game plan, both of them.
Now, this is only a suggestion but surely the Crows boys could have been accountable and picked up the closest Richmond jumper and stopped worrying about zoning off and protecting space. Richmond had 295 kicks and 181 marks and most of them were uncontested.
Who the hell was standing Joel Bowden, the bloke who ducked his head in a pre-season game? He had 28 kicks and 20 marks playing virtually as a quarter-back.
Who will put his hand up to say 'he was my opponent and I didn't pay him enough respect'?
The next thing. In the first quarter Adelaide had 19 clangers, the Tigers had 21. In the second quarter the Crows had 22 and Richmond 21, by my count, but Adelaide's clangers included 16 rubbish kicks to Richmond's 14.
That was 26 clanger kicks in a half to 22 so the Tigers were better with the foot skills and I was taught if you can't kick you can't play. Richmond hit the Crows harder than any other team in the competition and the Crows didn't handle it. There were 14 other opposition coaches watching who now know how to dismantle the Crows. I don't want to hear any Crows supporter saying "we've got injuries" - that's just an excuse.
I saw too many Crows miss tackles, fall over at the contest and I didn't see any real aggression around the ball.
That'll be top of the agenda in the coaches' meeting today.
What will happen now is footy fans around the country will criticise Terry Wallace and his game plan and I know why. People want to see open, attractive football with fierce contact, desperation and skills under pressure. They didn't get that on Saturday but I wouldn't point out Wallace because there's a rules committee and the coaches just play by the book.
One minute the rules committee says they've changed the rules to speed up the game, now they want to slow it down by restricting the number of interchanges.
They're ruining the game.
The rules committee should be abolished and let the game settle down for a few years, see how it evolves without any interference.
That's what the fans want and you have to keep them happy because without the fans, players and coaches - me included - don't get paid.
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