For the second week in a row, Adelaide found themselves with a slender lead over a fellow contender in the dying minutes of a scrappy slugfest.
Last time, Brisbane let them off the hook with a spectacular bottle-job to blow eight chances to grab the points for themselves. This time, Hawthorn did what the Lions could not.
In many ways, this three-point loss was a squaring of the ledger from what happened at the Adelaide Oval a week ago: the Crows, the better team for much of the night in Tasmania and who should have led by more but for their frustrating inability to convert in a first half they dominated, let slip four crucial premiership points they probably deserved.
But if the frantic finish to their win over Brisbane could be excused as a one-off, the dying minutes against the Hawks made something abundantly clear: the Crows have a close-game problem.
Once again, their efforts to hang onto a slender lead in the final stretch was an exercise in panic – from both individuals making key errors, to a structure around and behind the ball about as antithetical from the masters of the tight finish, Collingwood, as it’s possible to be.
It should have cost them against Brisbane; Hawthorn were in no mood to let the Crows off the hook two games running.
Really, it should have cost them earlier than it did, too: after a Hawthorn switch to the other side of the ground with seven minutes to go, Connor Macdonald’s wild snap towards goal exposed just how poorly the Crows were set up at the most important place of all.
Not only is there not a single Crow sweeping in the goalsquare, but even if the ball sits up or takes one of those famous Sherrin wonky bounces, Jack Gunston is nearest to the footy to ensure it’s a near-certain Hawks goal.
At the point of Macdonald snapping, there are ten Crows scattered around their defensive 50 – for there to be no less than five of them on the other side of the ground, having failed to adjust when the Hawks switched all of ten seconds ago, is inexcusable in such a tight game.
With just nine goals for the match up to that point, Adelaide could easily have been gone in that single moment – but the individual brilliance of Izak Rankine, and Hawthorn committing their own cardinal sin by leaving the goalsquare unguarded, ensured the match remained theirs to lose.
The errors start small: Jordon Butts, after another outstanding intercept mark, choosing not to pass to a free Josh Worrell in the back pocket, retain possession, and soak up some time and breathing room, and instead bomb long to a contest himself. Or the inability to keep the ball locked in from that boundary throw-in, with Conor Nash able to thump the ball forward and gain crucial metres for the Hawks.
But with four minutes to go, still holding onto that slender, three-point lead, the Crows produce a trio of glaring blunders within moments of one another to allow the Hawks to hit the front, and wrench the match from their grasp.
First a bouncing, clearing ball from Isaac Cumming towards the boundary on the wing gets spiked over the line by Darcy Fogarty – as obvious an insufficient intent free kick, despite former player Tomas Bugg’s apparent incredulity, that you’ll see.
If Fogarty simply gains possession and tumbles over the line, or tackles Josh Battle, then he gets away with it – this was a brain fade, plain and simple.
Worse, remarkably, is still to come: Battle passes to Jiath, who drives the ball long inside 50, and inexplicably, in a sea of red jumpers underneath the ball, the only one to fly at the footy is … Sam Berry.
Yep. Not Worrell, or Butts, or Mark Keane, or Reilly O’Brien, or anyone tall whose job it is to defuse such situations, but Berry, the tagger, who, while admirable in shutting down Jai Newcombe, simply shouldn’t be empowered to go for this ball.
It’s a breakdown in communication for the Crows’ defence, and even if Berry had indeed stayed down, it’s likely that Worrell and Butts, both making a run at the footy a second too late, would have spoiled themselves anyway.
But Berry’s fly creates two issues: one, his spoil doesn’t clear the area, sending the ball straight up in the air; and two, it leaves Hawks, and specifically Newcombe, dangerously free at ground level.
The Crows have swarmed at the footy’s drop zone like bees to a honey pot; Jack Gunston, meanwhile, has gambled, staying out the back as his opponent comes up to try and impact the contest.
It’s about to get even worse: Worrell and Butts have both overrun the contest, leaving a two on one underneath Berry’s spoil as it comes down. Lloyd Meek simply has to engage with O’Brien to allow Mabior Chol free rein to spike the ball forward – where Gunston is waiting, all by himself.
Somehow, from a slow play in which they had ample time to set up, the Crows have allowed a two on one and a two on ZERO within 15 metres of the Hawks’ goal.
Berry’s man, Newcombe, arrives on hand to support Gunston just as Brodie Smith comes haring back to offer support; Gunston’s handball reaches him in the nick of time, and the man barely sighted all night snaps the winning goal.
It’s an Adelaide masterclass in how to botch an inside 50, never mind the scoreline, never mind the time left on the clock. They simply could not have dealt with that ball any worse, and appropriately, it cost them the match.
This was even more glaring a series of calamities than against Brisbane last week, who continually peppered the goals for no reward; here, Hawthorn would have had to produce a howler of their own to mess up what was six points all but gifted to them on a platter.
The contrast to how the Hawks handled things with a lead of their own was stark: little incremental wins like Dylan Moore not blazing away as Butts had done after winning a free kick just outside 50, and instead going short to a free Josh Ward to soak up some time, or the Hawks setting up with three men a kick behind the ball so a fast-running Izak Rankine could only handball down the wing rather than kick long, forcing a turnover, or Ward surrendering to a Brodie Smith tackle inside defensive 50 rather than hacking a panicky ball clear into the unknown, all added up.
In the end, the seconds they saved, the multiple ball-ups they forced, proved vital, with the Crows breaking fast and the ball in Darcy Fogarty’s hands on the wing, too far from goal to score, when the siren sounded.
Hawthorn are by no means masters of the close finish yet; but they successfully held their late lead in a way the Crows would do well to learn from.
Nerves at the finish might, in a season as tight as this one, be the difference between a top-four finish or having to approach September the hard way from the lower half of the eight.
If that’s the case, Adelaide may well look back on Friday night in Launceston – and in particular that 30-second disasterclass to hand the Hawks their winning goal – as four points that got away.
