AFTER what he described as the oddest day he has even been involved in footy, Adelaide coach Matthew Clarke was a happy man.

“Obviously super proud of the group for the way they managed what was a truly bizarre day,” Clarke said.

“Actually our head of high performance was away today, so we had one of our younger guys fill in the role, and he had to run seven warm ups in his debut.”

“So it was clearly a strange day, but that said I thought obviously the first quarter I thought we played some strong footy. Into the wind in some pretty average conditions we moved the ball a little bit which was good, and then obviously after the torrential downpour the second half was tough for both teams. The ground was full of puddles and it was just a grind, but to get the outcome was really significant particularly for some of the younger players in there to experience that was pretty unique.”

With all the weather disruptions his side and opponents Collingwood had to face on Saturday, Clarke said that his instructions to his troops regarding the weather were pretty simple.

“Well as much as possible we said just as you always try to do control what we have control over and don’t let the distractions of the day take away your focus,” he said.

“So from that perspective that was probably the most pleasing thing, that our ability though wet was these unique set of circumstance to then keep coming back and playing some pretty decent footy.”

Clarke is fully aware of the challenge his Crows face next week, and knows exactly what they need to do to try and reverse the result against Brisbane from earlier in the season.

“Clearly they were better then us in that game. We started okay up there… but you never know, we’ll see.”

“We’d have to play a fair bit better than we did last time out. Their ability to get us on the outside hurt us that day, but we’ve been working away. We feel as though we’ve played good footy in patches right throughout the season, we’ve just been a little bit inconsistent. We haven’t been able to put four quarters of our best footy together, and if we don’t put four quarters of our best footy together we won’t win next week, but what’s to say we won’t?”