St Kilda will need to rise to the occasion if they’re going to be any chance of knocking off a strong Adelaide side in Adelaide on Friday night.
The Crows have been one of the best sides in the league this year, if not the best – they’ve won all but three games, and only one of their losses has come at home. That said, after going 6-0 to start the year, they’ve suffered three losses in their past five games, including one to Geelong last week. The basic takeaway from their losses has been that a side will to bump and grind in the middle of the ground and shut down Adelaide’s ball movement can trip them up. That’s good news for the Saints, who know how to do exactly that.
However, St Kilda haven’t been in excellent form lately. They had a bye last week, but had losses to Sydney and the Bulldogs before that. To be fair to the Saints, those were the grand final teams last year, and at the start of the season they wouldn’t have been expected to beat either. Still, for a team that wants to play finals to be as uncompetitive as St Kilda were at times in those matches is pretty disappointing.
Adelaide have Riley Knight back in the side and will debut Jonathon Beech, with David Mackay dropped and Luke Brown injured.
St Kilda have dropped all of Shane Savage, Darren Minchington and Daniel McKenzie, with Josh Bruce, Jimmy Webster and Nathan Wright recalled.
Adelaide have won the last six matches between these sides, five of which have been played in South Australia. The Crows have never lost to St Kilda at Adelaide Oval, and haven’t lost to the Saints on home soil since 2009. St Kilda have only three players who played in that game playing this one. All things considered a Crows win seems very likely and given how well they play at home it should be a big win. Crows -36.5 pts at $1.91 for us.
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