Ah, Adelaide. A city blessed with very pleasant weather this weekend - but still resolutely stuck 15 years in the past, despite the Glenelg tram and express bus to the footy both conveniently stopping right outside my hotel. At least the usually feral Crows fans were on good behaviour, but I've seen enough decrepit 60s houses and mullets for now...well, until July anyway.
Although the aesthetic of AAMI Stadium leaves a little to be desired (why do they have a line of people standing behind the outer?), I must give credit where it's due...the Crows do provide a reasonable level of pre-match entertainment - an area where Freo were once pacesetters, but have fallen away dramatically in recent years.
On Saturday we were treated to the various delights of dancing girls, enthusiastic game day announcers blessed with a kickass PA and scoreboards, the home team entering through a giant inflatable crow, a T-shirt-firing bazooka - and the truly bizarre spectacle of a junior crow mascot doing four laps of the oval on a bicycle powered largely by a giant fan on its back. Naff it may have been, but it dumps all over the FFC's efforts for the last few years...especially the truly inaudible PA at Subiaco.
Anyway, onto the game itself. Another loss had me hanging my head at the end of the game - but I had to wonder whether this was largely due to the compound effect of previous poor efforts, rather than our performance in isolation. Because I thought we were pretty damn good, although we did let ourselves down in a couple of critical areas. And if we hadn't have been staring down the barrel of 1-4, I'd almost be satisfied.
It was a scrappy game, full of bouquets and brickbats. To our immense credit, we managed to remedy our midfield problems of previous weeks to a large extent. Aaron Sandilands continued his vein of improved form with a fine effort, and a new mix of personnel at centre bounces worked well. Indeed, the fact that we managed to force choke meisters Adelaide into a panicky, handball-filled brand of football was a positive sign. Our focus and discipline was back, and for once the umpires rewarded us with some well deserved frees.
Of our midfield brigade, Rhys Palmer rebounded from his first duff game to almost become the matchwinner - he is definitely a gem to cherish, the first teenage Docker in many a year to have Freo fans salivating. Hinkley and Ibbotson also showed good form, and provided that these three (and Chris Mayne) can stay in the team, all we really need to complete the rebuilding block is our next great defender.
Unfortunately, the trade off of the high level of pressure was that our forward line malfunctioned and Adelaide managed to exploit scoring opportunies much better than we did. You cannot expect to kick two goals in a half of football and win - especially when it takes so long for the ball to get past our half forward line. This is the single thing most responsible for stopping us returning to the form of late 2006; everyone figured out that this was how you stopped Fremantle, and amazingly, the coaching panel have never formulated a proper response. And we have zero crumbing power as well. That said, Supermac and The Wizard both bobbed up and made handy contributions to our comeback, which was pleasing.
The defence was solid, but had noticeable holes at all the wrong moments. Scott Thornton played one of his poorest games ever on Simon Goodwin, Steven Dodd busted his gut as usual but still gave Burton too much space, and whoever was playing on Jason Porplyzia deserves a slap. Combined with Grover now labouring somewhat, it makes me very worried looking forward to next week - what I wouldn't give to have the likes of O'Reilly, Shane Parker and Haddrill back there now.
That leaves a couple of final tut-tuts. Byron Schammer's repeated fumbles in clear space were embarrassing (must do better) and Daniel Gilmore was back to the chicken trying to cross the road in the old Toyota ads (must think). But both were clearly trying their utmost, as were the entire team...so for that, I am thankful.
Our season is now in quite a parlous state. It certainly doesn't get any easier with the Len Hall game against Geelong, but a win is not impossible and after that comes a string of four very winnable games. And with a talented new generation coming to prominence and a coach just possibly starting to put his imprimatur on the side, I think my next 17 trips to the football will be stimulating whatever happens.