ADELAIDE onballer Nathan van Berlo says his side will look to quickly remove the emotion of Swan Michael O’Loughlin’s imminent retirement at AAMI Stadium on Saturday.
O’Loughlin announced his retirement at a press conference in Sydney on Tuesday.
Van Berlo said he expected the Swans to be up and about on the back of O’Loughlin’s announcement.
“Michael O’Loughlin has been a great servant for the Sydney Swans and I know they’re close as a playing group and will have a lot of feeling about that,” van Berlo said on Wednesday.
“I’d like to think it wouldn’t have any impact on how we prepare for the game. For them [the Swans] it might have a slight impact, but we’ll be doing all we can to control it.”
A more pressing issue for the Crows is how their ruckmen will stack up against in-form Swan Darren Jolly.
Queenslander Kurt Tippett has emerged as Adelaide’s most influential big man, but is required up forward.
Van Berlo joined coach Neil Craig in encouraging both Ivan Maric and Brad Moran to step up and stake a claim on the ruck position.
“Darren Jolly is having an outstanding season and it’s going to be a good test for Ivan and Brad to see how they go,” van Berlo said.
“Over the last couple of weeks we’ve seen them developing in their around the ground work and also in their physicality,” van Berlo said.
“I’ve noticed a change in attitude from both of them over the past month. Not that it was necessarily required, but I’ve seen them look to take their games to a new level and stand up because they realise that we need them.”
Recently the Crows have struggled coming back from the break having dropped their past two matches after the split round.
Van Berlo was confident a different approach to training would solve the problem.
“We’ve recognised that coming off a break we haven’t had performances that we were proud of,” he said.
“Instead of having a weekend off like we have in the past, we made sure we had time off during the week and came back and trained on the Saturday almost in a game-like performance.”
