ADELAIDE has won through to yet another AFL Women’s Preliminary Final, this time comprehensively beating Fremantle to set up a date with fellow perennial contenders Brisbane next week.

Reflecting on the game post-match, Adelaide coach Matthew Clarke said that the Crows were “rapt” with how the game panned out.

“I thought that probably the first maybe five minutes, Fremantle just looked a bit sharper out of the blocks, but the group responded really well and just worked their way through,” Clarke said. 

“Then clearly the second quarter broke the game open. From there, you know, it was pretty even tussle. But yeah we’re very happy with that outcome.”

It was not easy conditions to play in for either side, with the temperature getting up into the mid-30 degrees during the match.

“It was tough conditions, absolutely,” Clarke agreed.

“I think we churned through 47, 48 rotations by three quarter time, so we had to manage that a little bit in the last. “I haven’t got the schedule yet, but I imagine we’ll have a seven-day break and they’re very fit. “They work really hard and so on a seven day break, I don’t see it being a massive issue at all. “And you get to this point in the season, the reality is you’ve done the bulk of the work that you need to do.

“We’ll still train with some intensity on Wednesday, but the rest of the week, we’ll have a fairly recovery based focus.”

Conversion in attack has been an issue for the Crows at times this season, but Clarke says that his side is “getting there”.

“What was really pleasing was I thought Caitlin Gould‘s game was outstanding, but she got no reward, whereas other weeks she’s been clunking everything,” Clarke said.

Whereas to their credit, Fremantle defended her really strongly. But her contest enabled our smalls to get into the game. That’s probably something which hasn’t happened a hell of a lot during the course of the season. So that was a nice aspect of the game.”

One of the key clashes in the match was the ruck battle between Jess Allan and Mim Strom, which Clarke thought “was still a really good battle”.

“I think they got us in the centre, and we got them around ground stoppage, and then probably the aerial battle was probably about square,” Clarke said.

“But Jess has had a really strong season, and I know that she was really looking forward to the challenge of playing against a strong opponent. “I don’t know who got the points, but it was significant that Jess had a strong game.”