Revamped Crows midfield faces toughest AFL test: Nicks
Adelaide's revamped midfield will face the AFL's best on-ball brigade when confronting Gold Coast, coach Matthew Nicks says.
The Crows and Suns clash on the Gold Coast on Saturday with both white-hot clubs unbeaten.
Nicks has recast his midfield with the inclusion of GWS recruit James Peatling and former goalsneak Izak Rankine playing as a full-time on-baller.
But the Crows coach says his midfield will be challenged by the Suns' on-ball unit headed by Matt Rowell, captain Noah Anderson and former skipper Touk Miller.
"There are some great midfields in the competition," Nicks told reporters on Wednesday.
"But this (Gold Coast) is probably the pick of them and they're in some rare form.
"Rowell is playing his best footy - he does start the season really well when he's fresh, there's a reason he was such a highly regarded selection in the draft; Anderson alongside him - so it's never ending.
"We've got our work cut out for us.
"We're confident our mids are playing some good footy at the moment, that we'll take it to them but we know that's going to be a key area of the game."
Nicks was weighing whether to summon another midfielder to replace forward Josh Rachele, who will miss at least month after suffering broken ribs in Adelaide's 36-point win against North Melbourne last Sunday.
Josh Rachele has been subbed out with a rib injury following this contest in the first quarter.Sid Draper comes into the game.#AFLCrowsNorth pic.twitter.com/n11Wdbdju2
— AFL (@AFL) March 30, 2025
But he's all but ruled out Rankine returning to attack to replace Rachele.
"We would love to keep him (Rankine) around the footy - we'd love two of him, to be honest, another one forward," he said.
"He complements the guys in and around the footy, they're all making each other better.
"Matt Crouch is a different player to Izak Rankine and the two of them together make quite a duo.
"And then Jordan Dawson and (Jake) Soligo's game is going to another level, Peatling I thought on the weekend had his best game for us.
"We're going to need a lot of guys through that midfield because the challenge doesn't get much bigger than what we get this week."
Adelaide's superb start to the season - they have scored 100-plus points in three consecutive wins - has many declaring them ripe to end the club's finals drought dating back to 2017.
But Nicks said such talk was irrelevant inside his club.
"We don't even touch on it," he said.
"We have got a process that we go through every week, there's a structure to what we do.
"We come in and we review and we look at ways that we want to improve, we reward the stuff we love, the things that we value, and then we click our way into the next round."
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