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Carlton changed a few things, except the outcome.
This was Carlton doing things differently but also the same. They were trying to play differently, or altering the mix of players, but the sameness was in the outcome.
Michael Voss at least demonstrated this week he was prepared to try something different. The decision to drop George Hewett was considered surprising given he won the best and fairest last year. But it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
You cannot keep losing, and keep losing the same way, and not change things. The Blues could not go back to a midfield mix of Paddy Cripps, Adam Cerra and George Hewett when it had not been working, and it was becoming clear the game was going in another direction.
Hewett was the casualty of the Blues’ need to change that mix.
Cripps was on the bench at the start of the second quarter when Adelaide split the game open in a nine-minute burst. But the skipper has also been spending so much time on ball. A lack of run from the midfield and the need to foster more depth in that area were identified as problems in the Blues slump. They are not doing to address those issues by going with Cripps constantly.
Zac Williams started on the ball and played there at length during the game. Mitch McGovern played forward again, even though Jacob Weitering was out and the Crows had three talls in the forward line (Darcy Fogarty’s back injury meant he was replaced by Finnbar Maley).
When thunderstorms rumbled and rain dumped over the city before the match, there was an argument the demands of a wet, contested ball game would override Carlton’s need to change the mix of its midfield and that Voss should make a late change to recall Hewett.
Adelaide’s midfield is thin. In cricket terms, their midfield has one strike bowler, Jordan Dawson, and military mediums coming on at the other end. As a midfielder, Izaak Rankine is still like a batting all-rounder who might be good for a few overs and take a wicket, but he could also be expensive. (To be clear, he was excellent on Thursday night, but most of his best work was done as a forward, not a midfielder).
Matthew Nicks signalled his concern about his team’s midfield vulnerability, especially in the wet, when from the first quarter he rolled half-forward Jake Soligo up as an extra midfielder and played with a five-man forward line. Alex Neal-Bullen is apparently also a half-forward, but he tends roam all over the ground for most of the game and only reacquaints himself with his fellow forwards at centre ball-ups. There are few players who run as he does.
Through the first term none of this mattered because Sam Walsh was destroying Adelaide. He had 15 touches for the quarter and a handful of score assists and was slicing through the Crows. Adelaide sat on him after quarter-time, with Sam Berry assigned tagging duties. Walsh still finished with 29 disposals, but given he had more than half of those in that first quarter, the Crows did a good job of shutting him down, which also meant they blunted Carlton’s drive.
The difference in the game was that when Adelaide moved the ball from half-back, their players could hit a kick to open the game up, whereas Carlton had players who either didn’t see the option to kick to, didn’t trust themselves to hit it, or tried to make the kick and fluffed it. Carlton’s desire is not lacking, but their skill level and talent is.
The Blues have tried to find those players, like a Rankine or Josh Rachelle, who can break a game open in a quick burst. They brought in Will Hayward – whose suspension was especially unhelpful on Thursday night – and Ben Ainsworth, who kicked two goals as a small forward in the first quarter.
Ainsworth said he felt the Blues had made some changes, both in game style and positional moves, in their efforts to unpick what has been going wrong for them this season.
”I think you have to keep trying things throughout the season. If you keep doing the same thing, it’s a bit mundane. So we tried a few new things, and I think it worked in patches throughout the game, and blokes had their moments and had an impact,” Ainsworth said.
“We played our moments but not for long enough. Our intent is unquestionable, our pressure was unbelievable. It is probably the method and the detail around contests – whether to hold the ball in, whether to kill the ball out of bounds, stuff like that – that stacks up over a game.”
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