Adelaide was thumped by crosstown rivals Port Adelaide in the AAMI Community Series yesterday by 71 points, conceding 11 second-half goals.
Coming off their first wooden spoon, the Crows will be an interesting team to watch this year given they lost Brad Crouch, Kyle Hartigan and Rory Atkins from that already struggling team, while Wayne Milera has suffered a season-ending injury and both Daniel Talia and Tom Doedee are dealing with injury issues of their own.
Watching the AAMI Community Series closely, Kane Cornes believes Adelaide put out their single worst team of 22 players in the club’s history on the weekend.
“It is the worst Crows team we’ve seen in 31 years,” Cornes told SEN SA Breakfast.
“It’s worse than last year. I saw the teams come out on Saturday night and the Crows released their 22 and I was going through it and I actually had to send dad a message because sometimes it’s just good to get a second opinion.
“So I sent him the screenshot on Saturday night at 7:46 and I said ‘this may be the weakest Crows line-up in 30 years … ?’ and he wrote back and said ‘certainly the weakest defence’ and we saw that on the weekend.
“What I wanted to see were some signs, some improvement from the previous week.
“They played Port Adelaide the previous week, and I wanted to see some improvement, I wanted to see a level up from some of the youngsters, I wanted to see a response from the midfield, which they got, so if there was one positive from the game it was the Crows won the centre bounces after being smashed in there the week before.
“But if Matthew Nicks’ mantra has been defence since he’s taken over and he’s tried to drill that into the players, there was no defence at all (on the weekend) and that’s the concerning part.
“Giving effort, giving a contest and running when the opposition has got the ball takes no draft picks, no experience, no talent and we didn’t get that at all yesterday.
“And it’s early days and people are fighting for their spot, we got nothing.
“It’s early, but it looks like a broken team already.”
Adelaide faces a tough ask in Round 1, hosting Geelong at Adelaide Oval.
They then have winnable games against Sydney, Gold Coast and North Melbourne.