Josh Rachele wasted no time in showing the footy world why the Crows used their first pick of the 2021 national draft to claim the exciting young forward.
The former Murray Bushranger booted three majors in his first piece of senior action in a practice match loss to Brisbane on Friday.
Despite displaying a level of comfort that is rare for first year players, Rachele revealed that it did in fact take him some time to get his feet under him.
“It’s not easy at all,” he said on SEN SA Breakfast.
“It took me a while to get into the game.”
The 18-year-old felt comfortable in the lead up to the game, but as the opening siren neared, the butterflies began.
“I thought I had it all under control and felt pretty reasonable going into the game,“ he said.
“But then the bus ride it starts to hit you a little bit and the nerves kick in.”
Rachele comes from a soccer background and has developed the natural foot skills to play as an AFL forward.
While his three-goal haul suggests that he is a natural at this position, the rookie still believes that he has areas to improve if he wants to realise his full potential.
“I’ve been playing a versatile high half-forward role,” he said.
“In that type of role, you have games where you’re really on and games where you’re probably not going to have too many opportunities.
“I think in those games it’s just really important to work defensively on your game.
“And I really need to work on some defensive parts of my game.”
As the coach of a young side, Matthew Nicks has developed a simple method to ensure that his team can find ways to grow and improve.
Nicks provides the players with three pillars that they are to try and meet in a particular game.
Rachele outlined the elements they were assigned for their game against the Lions.
“We wanted to be hungrier, harder and cleaner,” he added.
“Going in, I think we were a lot hungrier, but that harder and cleaner stuff we didn’t really tick off much.
“We’ll look to improve and hopefully we can go again this week.”
Adelaide will face cross-town rival Port Adelaide in the AAMI Community Series at Richmond Oval this Saturday.