Crows craft counterattack to Cats’ main dangers
IT’S a matter of when, not if, Patrick Dangerfield lines up in attack tonight, according to Crows assistant coach James Podsiadly.
The reigning Brownlow medallist spent time inside the forward 50 when the two sides last met, but the Crows defence kept him to one goal and just 25 touches in an Adelaide victory.
Podsiadly said the coaching staff would devise a plan for Dangerfield.
“I think he’ll be there; whether he’ll be there from the start or halfway through the first quarter, at some point in time he’ll be there,” he told the Geelong Advertiser.
“He’s done that to us in the past before and we’ve handled it pretty well.
“I think Jake Kelly played on him last time, Luke Brown also goes to those sort of players and Kyle Hartigan played on him in the pre-season game, so we’ve got three or four guys we think can go to him when he goes down there.”
Steven Motlop produced one of his best games of the season last week, steering Geelong into a preliminary final with 23 disposals and a goal in a classy performance.
But Podsiadly, a 2011 Geelong premiership player, said his side wouldn’t put too much attention into shutting Motlop out of the game.
“You don’t know whether it’s the chicken or the egg with Mots but, knowing Mots when I was there as a player and seeing him from an external coaching point of view, he’s obviously extremely talented,” he said.
“But I don’t think he’s the sole reason why the Cats play well. You’ve obviously got guys (like) Selwood and Dangerfield, but Mitch Duncan is in really good form at the moment and the Geelong backline is pretty resolute as well.”
The Crows welcome back Rory Sloane after having his appendix removed, but Brodie Smith and Mitch McGovern will miss the preliminary final clash.
Podsiadly said his side’s depth would be able to cover the losses.
“We’ve shown throughout the year we’ve had players go out of our side; one of our best mids last week didn’t play and we had other players play the role, so we’ve really had no issues in covering for individuals,” he said.
Last year the two qualifying final winners bowed out in the preliminary final, having played just one game of football in nearly three weeks.
But Podsiadly said his side had learnt lessons from its break heading into week one of finals.
“We backed in our program and our training regime and came out against GWS and played really well,” he said.
“I think we learnt a lot out of that bye and had something similar in the last two weeks here. A lot can be made of it, to be honest, but we’ve trained pretty well and we’ll back our program in.”