Crows Agree It's All About Round 1
The Sunday Age
Sunday March 2, 2008
ADELAIDE will host St Kilda in the NAB Cup grand final at AAMI Stadium next Saturday night, but Crows coach Neil Craig says the most important aspect of the match will be to prepare for round one against the Western Bulldogs on Easter Sunday.
"Winning is important to us; make no mistake. But the mentality that we take to ground is our most important thing. We still need to make sure that we use the NAB Cup to finalise our preparation for round one," Craig said after last night's 23-point win over Hawthorn. While Craig believes the cup plays an important role, he is refusing to change the club's plan to use the competition as anything but a warm-up. "We stay with what we decided as a club before the season started . . . so we can make good assessments at the end of next week," Craig said. "We pride ourselves on not changing. We still need to expose our younger midfield, and it was a great game tonight. They did a great job there, and also the capacity of our senior guys who played in different areas."Although Saints coach Ross Lyon has admitted that a grand final berth "certainly wasn't the objective when we started", he is confident that with the regular season nigh, "we'll come and put on a good show next week".And with Nick Riewoldt, Luke Ball and Lenny Hayes having pulled up well from their first-up hitout on Friday night, and Justin Koschitzke and Max Hudghton in strong contention to return, St Kilda will be close to full strength.Hayes believes the Saints' young players have the most to gain from the occasion. "It has been excellent to see the young boys really step up, it is going to be a great experience for them," Hayes said. "Any chance you get to win a bit of silverware, you always go for it, so it should be good." Hawthorn's loss was soured by a potentially serious knee injury to youngster Beau Muston, who limped from the ground in the second quarter after a seemingly innocuous tangle for the ball. Hawks coach Alistair Clarkson said the extent of Muston's injury would be revealed by scans in Melbourne today. "We have to wait and see what the result of the scan is but it doesn't look good for 'Musto'," Clarkson said.Adelaide escaped the semi-final injury free, and will consider playing Kris Massie, who was hampered by injury, for the first time in this series.Despite being a semi-final, the estimated attendance last night was only 10,000.
© 2008 The Sunday Age