Let's be frank. The reason St Kilda star Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera's heroics created such a buzz last weekend is partly because AFL season 2025 has been a bit of a fizzer.
Not every year can be the stuff of spine-tingling Hollywood thrillers, of course, but this season has too often seemed a bit of a damp squib, short on drama, close finishes, even enough quality football at times.
That's the bad news. The good news is that this AFL season that can be still saved. There's a potential hero waiting in the wings. And its name is the Adelaide Football Club.
Okay, so we've just lost our Port Adelaide readers. But stay with me here. If you're not a parochial Power fan and know your own team isn't good enough to go all the way this season, why wouldn't you want to see the Crows salute on the last Saturday of September?
Want a good storyline to this year's premier? Adelaide's your team. Certainly relative to the other members of the current top four, Collingwood, Brisbane and Geelong ... all September perennials, and likely to offer us simply 'more of the same'. It's grown tiresome.
That trio have won the last three premierships between them, have all been in a couple of Grand Finals over the past decade, and rarely missed finals. The Crows haven't been part of finals since their ill-fated 2017 campaign. They haven't won a flag since 1998 and only two in their now 35-year history.
Do you like to see hard work rewarded? Again, the Crows are your baby. Their rebuild under Matthew Nicks has been slow going at times, yet but for a stumble last year, it's been a gradual process since 2020; three wins, to seven, eight, 11 two years ago.
Like a team which plays positive footy and scores? Yep, that's Adelaide. Currently third for points for; No. 1 two years ago. It's a potent mix, three big key forwards in Riley Thilthorpe, Darcy Fogarty and Taylor Walker, a clever medium-sizer in Ben Keays, and the excitement of the likes of Izaak Rankine and a host of mids who can creep forward and inflict scoreboard damage.
They're hard workers too. Adelaide is ranked No.1 for both forward half intercepts and scores from those forward half intercepts.
Enjoy seeing more peripheral players from other clubs get an opportunity to play a bigger role elsewhere and not only thrive but add even more than was anticipated to their new tribes?
That's the sort of impact former Demon Alex Neal-Bullen and former Giants pair Isaac Cumming and James Peatling have had on Adelaide, adding depth to the midfield group, bolstering the backline, and allowing the previously overworked likes of skipper Jordan Dawson to exert more influence in other parts of the ground.
And do you like a group of players who punch above their weight division? Well, that's Adelaide's defence.
Veteran Rory Laird aside, how much do people beyond the city of churches know about players like Josh Worrell, Max Michalanney, Mitch Hinge, Mark Keane, Nick Murray, or Jordan Butts? Even Wayne Milera, now 27 and in his ninth season of senior football with well over 100 games in the bank, is hardly a known commodity beyond the state border.
But they've gone from being a group widely perceived as the Crows' biggest achilles heel to a major asset. Adelaide is ranked No.2 in the competition for fewest points conceded, and for opposition points per inside 50. They're first for defending scores from clearances and second for opposition scores from turnovers.
The Crows two years ago were prolific scorers but ranked only ninth for defence. They focused heavily in the lead-up to 2024 on their defensive mechanisms. Perhaps too much, as it transpired, as Adelaide's forward potency withered along with its win-loss tally. But balance between the two facets is the key, and right now, statistically at least, Adelaide has the best balance in the competition.
Perhaps you should be throwing your supporting lot in with the Crows, too, if you like history repeating itself. Because there's a similarity between Adelaide and a couple of other important pieces of history which haven't yet earned much attention but seem strikingly significant.
Both Geelong, nearly 20 years ago now, and Richmond, close enough to a decade ago, had several years of steady growth and development before one shocker of a season saw the vultures circling and all that previous work threatened.
The history books will say that the Cats' and Tigers' decisions to stick with their respective coaches Mark Thompson and Damien Hardwick and refuse to buckle to white noise and the knee jerk reaction paid off big time with multiple premierships.
Adelaide may not have been advanced in its big picture as those other sides were, but the pressure on Nicks and what he and his coaching crew had built off the back of the Crows unimpressive eight-win season last year was real.
Whether or not the Crows go on to answer the doubters as emphatically as did Geelong and Richmond remains to be seen, but an Adelaide premiership in 2025 is at worst now a very real proposition. It would be a flag well deserved. And a great story. One AFL football this year could really use.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.