ADELAIDE Crows secured a scrappy four-point win over St Kilda on Friday night, in the first match of their AFL Women’s condensed fixture period.

It was a hard fought contest that saw a lot of turnovers, inaccuracy in front of goal and a nail-biting finish which saw the Crows score four points (including a rushed behind) in the final quarter to keep the Saints at bay.

It was obvious that Adelaide’s intent was there from the beginning after a heartbreaking loss to their fierce rivals Brisbane last week, that coupled with St. Kilda’s mindset to get the Crows under pressure early, made it a highly contested match.

Taking most of the scoring shots within the contest, it was the Crows’ inaccuracy in front of goal that will emerge as a turning point for Matthew Clarke‘s team.

He addressed this aspect of their game post-match as well as whether the Crows looked fatigued after a taxing game against the Lions.

“That’s our first game on a shorter break, so we had a five-day break which is not that unusual to be honest, you often have those,” Clarke said.

“We will wait and see over the next couple [of days] but I thought the start was intense, both teams’ defensive pressure was through the roof and it probably played out that way through the course of the game.

“Neither team could really break it open, there was lots to like other than perhaps our ball use and our ability to make the most of our opportunities, we probably didn’t make do that as much as we would have liked.”

Clarke explained that the Saints’ pressure was a cause for their poor ball use and inaccuracy, however this is something that they will need to fix on the run as they look towards Wednesday’s upcoming fixture.

“Up until now we were not too bad, yeah that one would have been nice to knock over the last couple in the last quarter to give ourselves a bit of margin,” he continued.

“In the end, I think ultimately often when you are inaccurate it has something to do with the pressure from the opposition, obviously we missed a couple of set shots, which we’d like to have back but St. Kilda’s pressure was really, really hot.

“Ultimately we were really happy with the performance, but we’ll need to tidy up our ball use, so that’s probably the thing, and with the condensed fixture we are probably not going to a massive opportunity to train that.

“We’ll have a relatively light session Monday and then we will be back here next Wednesday night against the Dees who are starting to get some of their players back.

“We are actually really looking forward to playing again, but yeah we will have to manage the group again well over the next few days.”

One of the dominant forces for the Crows was their co-captain Ebony Marinoff. Having what could be a career-best season, she has been the best midfielder for Adelaide across the year. She had 31 disposals, six marks, 17 tackles and nine clearances to go with 350 metres gained.

“She’s been very, very consistent for her whole career, and also we get to watch her go to work Monday to Friday, she’s the hardest working player in our squad,” Clarke said.

“She just trains and trains and trains and therefore it’s not surprising that she performs really well.”

Coming into the contest, the Saints have had two losses against Fremantle and Hawthorn. Also entering the condensed schedule, St. Kilda were far from disappointing despite the close loss to Adelaide.

Head coach Nick Dal Santo spoke after the game about their expectations coming into the match.

“We came here really needing to work on some stuff off the back of, not only the last few weeks but also I think people are really getting caught off the back of results,” Dal Santo said.

“Our previous two weeks to the last fortnight where we lost those games, hadn’t been great football and we thought we had a lot of growth within our group.

“We knew really clearly that tonight was going to be a really big challenge, we respect the Crows as we do everybody, we’ve seen what they’ve done not only this season, but for years and we knew that this was going to be a big challenge on a unique ground that we don’t play at very often.

“I was really proud of our group, we really stuck at it, it was a really hard fought game.

“A lot of the areas that we wanted to focus on internally, we actually probably worked on it or got to do it a little bit better so yes I understand the disappointment from the result but we’ve got to improve and I thought we took a step forward tonight.”