ON SUNDAY afternoon in the final game of the condensed fixture period, it was the Adelaide Crows that bounced back from a troubling three game run to crush the Giants at Henson Park.

Coming off a two-point loss to rivals Brisbane, followed by a dour win over St. Kilda at home, then a deflating two-point loss to Melbourne, Adelaide returned to the winners list in a big way against GWS.

Adelaide coach Matthew Clarke spoke post-match about how they’ve tried to turn the tide.

“Over the last couple of weeks, our scoring has dried up a little bit and it’s been around just that composure, that final execution going into the forwards and giving them a decent look at it,” Clarke continued.

“That was probably the thing that shifted a little bit, we were able to put the ball to our forwards’ advantage and allow them to fly.”

The Crows midfielders were able to get on top which was part of their dominance, producing 50 inside 50s to GWS’ 14. They gave their forwards so many chances inside their forwardline that nine individual goal scorers emerged from the Crows.

Clarke gave a nod to their execution of their plan to help their forwards convert saying that the nature of the mid-week fixturing didn’t help due to their lower training load.

“Obviously we didn’t get the chance to train, so really all we did was discuss it and say how about we try this and fortunately they were able to execute it a bit better,” he said.

“It’s been interesting, physically our group trains, everyone across the league trains really hard, so you are able to manage the physical load.

“I think over a two week period that’s probably as long as you’d want to be doing it, in terms of backing up on the four and five day turns.

“In terms of condensing the fixture to get an extra game, then that’s what we have to do but hopefully we can look at other creative ways to get those extra games in so that the players can enjoy a more complete season.”

Although it was a well-rounded performance by his side, it was obvious that their prime midfielder Ebony Marinoff was the Player of the Match. She had 41 disposals to go with 17 tackles and 12 clearances.

Clarke even admitted that ‘Noffy’ probably was the happiest about the condensed fixture giving her more games in succession.

“Most weeks I get asked about ‘Eb’ because of her performance and the key feature is just that unbelievable consistency,” Clarke said.

“She’s probably one if you said we’re going to play every four days for the rest of the year, she’d go ‘you beauty’, cause she just loves the work and so she was certainly one we had no concerns about coming in and the performance was once again really strong.”

When asked about the performances of youngsters Madison Newman and Sarah Goodwin, Clarke had praise that extended to the whole group.

Newman and Goodwin both had 17 touches each across the game with good impact with ball in hand.

“I actually thought it was pretty even across the group, I thought everyone really took their moment and contributed but it’s always great when particularly that next wave of players start to find their feet at the level and feel comfortable,” he said. “So they are some nice steps forward for those players.”

GWS coach Cam Bernasconi was understandably disappointed by the showing. Knowing that the Crows were one of the top sides, he wasn’t as frustrated by the scoreline, but the way they let their opposition kick goals in junk time.

“We knew it would be a tough contest, they are a really good side and certainly a side that we aspire to be one day,” Bernasconi explained.

“I thought we competed quite well in patches of the game, but it was a pretty disappointing way to finish.

“We just got smashed around the ball and kind of leaked some easy goals late, and yeah we kicked two late to make it look a little bit better but I was pretty disappointed with the way we probably finished the game.

“The positive is that we’ve got a seven day break now, not a four or five so we can recover and review properly and the train, so we haven’t really trained properly in two weeks so it will be nice to work on our contest and actually train it during the week.”