Adelaide’s surge up the ladder in 2023 could not have more perfectly coincided with a single move from Matthew Nicks: shifting Jordan Dawson from half-back into the middle.
Ever since the Crows’ captain was injected into the on-ball brigade to start Round 3’s Showdown against Port Adelaide, the impact on the team has been immense. They now rival Collingwood and St Kilda for electric ball movement, they’ve become the AFL’s most efficient team at converting inside 50s into scoring shots, and their ball movement, once patchy at best at the most important points on the ground, is rarely short of outstanding.
All of that spelled doom for Carlton in a 56-point victory, and more specifically, an eight goals to two first quarter for the ages. The Magpies put the footy world on notice with their 13-goal first half against Port Adelaide in Round 2; this was every bit as spectacular.
Dawson is central to all of this. His Showdown Medal win might have come at a surprise, but his two performances since have been another level up entirely. He is, and always has been, a stunningly good kick – now, he’s the one driving the ball inside 50 for the Crows more often than not.
It means good things for the Crows if Dawson is the man streaming out of centre bounces, ball in hand, with one of the AFL’s most dangerous forward lines in front of him presenting options aplenty. It’s a buffet breakfast for a player of his foot skills: all he has to do is pick.
Mmm, Tex Walker this time? Maybe not, Jacob Weitering’s quite close to him. Izak Rankine? No, too far away, and deep in the pocket. Oh, here we go! Darcy Fogarty in half a metre of space, surrounded by five Blues. Piece of cake.
Add to that his big body and core strength, perfectly suited to an on-baller’s life, and you can’t even make the accusation hounding Nick Daicos at the moment, that his elite kicking is all just cheap handball receives and uncontested possessions. Dawson had seven clearances to tear the Blues apart from the coalface. With it came 10 inside 50s – the number that most outlines his incredible performance.
Jordan Dawson of the Crows. (Photo by Sarah Reed/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Three of those clearances, four inside 50s and five score involvements came in the first term alone. Rarely was a disposal wasted. Together with Rory Laird, the industrious Lucius Fox to Dawson’s Batsman quietly going about his business at the bottom of packs and as leading distributor with his fast hands, the pair were too much for a Blues’ midfield that at times last year was the most dominant contested-ball unit in the business.
He’s not quick, but he has that Scott Pendlebury-esque trait of wonderful spatial awareness that means he’s rarely caught with the ball. He doesn’t play like Pendlebury, though, left-footedness aside; it’s more like what we thought Daniel Rich would become after his phenomenal, Rising Star-winning debut season of 2009.
At the moment, it’s getting extremely hard to argue Dawson isn’t a top-ten player in the game. Keep this form up, and his Brownlow odds will plunge accordingly.
He’s not the only Crow currently in career-best form, to be sure. After years of being the weak link in the 2018 ‘Superdraft’, Chayce Jones has found a niche as an attacking winger. He’s benefitting tremendously from the Crows’ rapid ball movement, while also directly contributing to it: he’s always been too slight for an inside role in a stoppage-dominated team, but with the Crows putting pedal to the metal every chance they get, his ability to find space on the outside and composed ball use make him another avenue into attack.
You can put Josh Rachele into that mix, too: if Dawson’s move onto the ball has given the Crows class to burn, Rachele is the whippet-quick, ultra-aggressive option they’ve been crying out for.
He’s a better ball user than his five clangers on Thursday night indicate: whether it’s excitement or overconfidence, he does tend to bite off kicks not even Dawson would expect to hit. Not that it matters: the Crows, like the Magpies, back themselves to the hilt to hit their targets, and when it works, it’s spectacular.
That applies to their kicking for goal, too. Virtually nothing has changed about the shots they’ve taken in the last three weeks compared to Rounds 1 and 2: yet they’ve gone from 22.34 to start the season to 53.28 in their three wins.
The Crows love to be unpredictable when going inside 50, and rarely attack the same area of their arc twice in a row. It’s possible when you’ve got so many options, tall and small, to deliver to, and made life nightmarish all evening for Jacob Weitering, who the Crows made sure to avoid as much as possible – if he was next to Walker, they opted for Darcy Fogarty; if he was standing Thilthorpe, they’d find Luke Pedlar (who, as it happens, might be the best mid-sized pressure forward in the game).
Adelaide didn’t dominate the stoppages all night: indeed, after thrashing the Blues 16-8 for clearances in the first term, they’d lose it 21-34 for the rest of the evening. Just as remarkably given the final margin, they’d have 51 inside 50s, two fewer than the Blues.
But the Crows are too potent to give that much of a look in: they’ve always got an option ready for a mark inside 50, which they found a staggering 20 of on Thursday night. Now that they’re kicking straight… look out.
Behind the ball, too, the Crows are well stocked. The Blues took until the third quarter to get their first goal from a centre clearance (the Crows had three by midway through the second term alone). Considering that means Harry McKay and Charlie Curnow one out against a still-undersized backline, and that the Blues mostly matched the Crows 11-9 out of the centre following a first-quarter massacre, that’s impressive.
The first half is pressure on the ball-carrier: you need to be fast to get the hop on the Crows. Rachele and Lachie Murphy – remember when he was your whipping boy, Adelaide fans? – quickly swarm the contest and prevent opposition half-backs from getting handball receives from under-pressure midfielders, leading to high, hopeful long balls inside 50, if anything.
Even McKay and Curnow, who took six marks inside 50 between them, couldn’t hope to make something of them with any regularity.
Tom Doedee eats those balls up for breakfast; Nick Murray and Jordon Butts relished the chance to neutralise contests with a timely spoil; defensive winger Mitch Hinge pushes back to plug leading lanes and then as a handball receive option out the back to rebound. It all runs like clockwork.
Then, when the ball is won back, they quickly move to get the ball in the hands of their bevy of elite users. Dawson’s kicking is hardly missed back there – Brodie Smith has always been super by foot, while Wayne Milera has made a home at half-back, with his pace an added bonus. Doedee, too, is very safe; further afield, the zippy Lachie Sholl makes himself an outlet option time and again, taking eight uncontested marks against the Blues.
One play in the third quarter summed this up: within 15 seconds from a Blues behind, the Crows had made it up the other end and into the arms of Walker, with three kicks all to players goal side of their Carlton opponent. It was a set play that would have been squandered with one wayward pass, but every single player had run hard enough to have free space – and it’s amazing what elite AFL footballers can do under no direct pressure.
When a long, high ball out of Dodge is required – and the Blues, with 17 tackles inside 50, did force plenty of them – Walker makes his presence felt, taking a game-high six contested marks. Considering both his age and his impact near goal, that he’s become almost a roving centre-half forward is a supreme credit to his fitness. He’s another exceptional ball-user, too, which allows the Crows to safely put together attacking chains from deep in defence.
In one play, he began a foray forward with a strong contested mark on Lewis Young at half-back; mere moments later, there he was again, bobbing up inside 50 to once again beat Young to the ball. You won’t see a more hard-earned goal from a key forward all season.
Nicks is empowered to let Walker play havoc up the ground because no longer does it jeopardise the Crows’ structure ahead of the footy. Even last year, it was Walker or bust for marking inside 50: now, Riley Thilthorpe is always a chance to mark or bring the ball to ground if Tex is missing.
Benefitting most, though, from their ball movement was Darcy Fogarty, with seven marks inside 50. The quintessential hit-up forward, Fogarty is old-school in a good way, and it’s no secret he’s getting better and better now that the Crows aren’t squandering the ball moving forward like they did in the early days of Nicks’ tenure.
Fogarty, like Walker, got up the ground as an outlet option to help out his defenders regularly, but seven of his ten marks came inside 50. With five goals – and he missed a few he’d normally nail – and three for Walker, a quiet night from Thilthorpe (who played almost as a Weitering decoy at times) was more than coverable.
That’s without even touching on Ben Keays, who once again lined up on Adam Saad from the first bounce, once again reduced him to a shadow of his line-breaking best (Saad’s 17 disposals and 417 metres gained well down on his best), and once again punished him the other way with three goals.
As good as he was playing pure midfield in recent seasons, his kicking inside 50 was always a weakness, and together with Laird and Sam Berry, gave the on-ball brigade a sameness that they don’t have anymore with Dawson, Rachele, and any number of others roaming in there.
Which brings me back to Dawson, the catalyst for so much of this. I compared him to Rich, and with that comes this added caveat: for years after 2009, tags practically ruined his career, and forced a later-years move to half-back that coincided with Brisbane’s surge up the ladder.
Virtually every coach in the league declared Rich’s raking left boot too dangerous to be left unchecked, and hard tags became a constant surge. I still remember Nick Lower – to answer your question: this guy – holding Rich to just eight disposals all game in a big Bulldogs win in Round 1, 2013.
We don’t know yet if Dawson is as susceptible as Rich was to a hard tag – he’s certainly a bigger body – but no one has really tried. Even Ed Curnow, nominally moved into the centre to keep an eye on him following quarter time, hardly laid a hand on him.
I lost count of how many times Dawson sauntered from the centre square, ball in hand or not, and went as he pleased with not a single Blue following him. At one point in the first term, he burst from the centre, tripped over, and had the time to get to his feet, take another step, and still dish off a pass inside 50.
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Giving Dawson that much space is essentially suicide. Fremantle paid him equally little mind last week.
Tags have gone out of vogue, barring a few exceptions, in recent seasons – and the game’s best and most damaging midfielders are cashing in. At the moment, though, Dawson is too damaging, and too crucial to the way the Crows play, to be left as thoroughly unchecked as the Blues did on Thursday night.
It’s time for a tag.
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