While it might not be a turning point in
“The performance tonight doesn’t mean that we’ve turned thecorner, but what it does is demonstrate to our supporters that the capacity toproduce it [hard, contested footy] is still there,” Craig said.
“We’ve still got a lot of people out of our side, but itdoesn’t who plays, that’s the expectation.”
The Crows trailed by 12 points at the final change, but animpassioned plea from assistant coach Paul Hamilton instigated a match winninglast term.
Led by Showdown Medalist Simon Goodwin Adelaide reversed anunfavourable clearance count to give the Crows the edge at the stoppages.
“I think the clearances ended up 16 to four in that lastterm, so that was a huge change around for us and that went a long way to uswinning the game,” he said.
“I think our players tonight showed enormous courage andskills of persistence to win a really tough game of footy. I know the playersare really proud of what they produced and it was good to be able to performlike that in front of our home crowd.”
The win prevented Craig from dropping a record four straightgames and the coach said the Showdown triumph was a result of just a ‘little’more effort.
“What you saw tonight was theeffort we’ve been talking about that we needed,” he said.
“You can talk about it, but what your supporters want to seeis some action and what a better night to put it on show. I think that littlebit extra effort makes a huge difference. Our challenge as a club is to keepthat intensity going because we need to.”
The Crows are likely to be without key big men Ben Rutten(calf and knee), Nathan Bock (groin) and Ken McGregor (thigh strain) for theclash, but Craig said the Crows will continue to push “on”.
“We’re ready to go. We started preparing for
“It’s a great challenge. They’re the form side of the compand earlier in the year, while we didn’t beat them, we demonstrated we’ve gotthe capacity to match them in intensity and hard ball.”