After a week of off-field drama, several sides head into the final round with renewed, but faint, AFL finals chances.
“Ninth is the new eighth,” was how Adelaide Crows coach Brenton Sanderson summed it up yesterday.
And there’s another twist – Adelaide need the help of Port to keep Carlton at bay, putting Crows officials and fans in the unusual position of having to support Port.
“We need Port to win here against Carlton … so we’ll keep one eye on that, but our focus should be to go over to West Coast to win and win well,” Sanderson said Wednesday.
“They trained before us this morning and a couple of our staff had a bit of overlap and there was a bit of friendly banter that we’re obviously hoping that Port win well this week,” he said.
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“It’s not very often that a Crows staff member says that or Crows coaching staff says that we hope Port play well this week, but ultimately we need them to win and to win well.”
Finals aside, the Crows would like to end their season with a solid pointer to 2014.
“It shouldn’t change whether you go more attacking or you try and lock them down, we’ll just go over there and try and win as best we can,” Sanderson said.
“If you go into a game thinking we’ll just make it a shootout and score as many points as we can, you could almost go the other way too and [think] we want to try and prevent West Coast from scoring as much as possible.”
Port Adelaide plays Carlton on 4.10pm Saturday, leaving Adelaide a clear view of where it sits by the time it takes to the ground in Perth at 7.40pm SA time.
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