‘Sick of that’: Crows coach’s honest admission as Collingwood loss exposes flag ‘reality’

Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks said his team was sick of regularly falling short of the best teams in the league and that their aim was to emulate sides like Collingwood after losing to them yet again at the MCG on Saturday.

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It was the 10th time in a row that the Magpies got the better of the Crows, and the last five encounters have been decided by an average of just four points.

Adelaide also failed to defeat Gold Coast and Geelong this season and being close enough, but not good enough, against such teams is starting to wear thin on them.

“We have confidence in where we’re at but there’s also a reality,” Nicks said.

“We have to be better. Walk away from these with a 10-point loss or a one-kick differential – we’re better than that and today there were some key moments which we look back on, as we do on Mondays after a game where we don’t get the outcome we’re after, and we kick ourselves.

“I think we’re sick of that. So we know we’re a good side, we want to be a great side like they are and we have a lot of respect for them.

“They’re an experienced outfit, they proved it week in week out, they don’t make too many mistakes, so we’ve got to get ourselves to that level if we want to be consistent.”

In what was another tight contest between the two sides, Nicks lamented “costly errors” that led to Collingwood goals.

In the third quarter, Darcy Fogarty foolishly knocked the ball out of Darcy Cameron’s hands after the Collingwood ruckman took a mark 75m out from goal. The territory bonus brought Cameron within point-blank range and he made no mistake.

And just seconds before the three-quarter time siren, Beau McCreery’s mongrel punt for goal fell well short, but Jamie Elliott came from the clouds to outmark Reilly O’Brien at the top of the goal square. The Adelaide ruckman had to be stronger against the Pies small forward, and it cost the Crows as Elliott extended his team’s lead to 16 points at the final change.

“Just small things that we know we’ve got to get right if we want to beat the best side in the comp,” Nicks said.

The Crows were also let down by wayward goalkicking, especially in the third quarter when the usually-reliable Izak Rankine sent a pair of regulation set shots out of bounds on the full.

“At one stage we were 1.7 from stoppage, so if you’re able to turn that around and finish some of your work off (that would help),” Nicks said.

“It was really important today in a low-scoring game for us to knock through our opportunities, especially when it’s 30, 40m with set shots.”

But Nicks said he wouldn’t need to get Rankine to do extra work on his set shots this week at training.

“I’ll back Izak in anywhere inside 50 more often than not,” he said.

“We’ll probably sit down and talk through it, but it won’t be a panic, it’ll be just giving him some reinforcement that we know he can do it.

“It’s not something that we’ll dwell on.”