Round 15: West v Adelaide - Sunday 26 July @ City Mazda Stadium

West Adelaide weren't overly convincing in their win over Centrals, while Adelaide completely destroyed North. Who will come away with the win this week?

West to win comfortably, by around 6 goals

Afelaide are a far different side right now. Only 3 or 4 top up players.

Tough game for West.

Yep, this game certainly has a different complexion than it did a month or two ago. The Crows look very strong and if whispers of Sloanes return are correct then it adds yet another listed player to their SANFL ranks. I'll still tip West, but this game could go either way.

The Crows really do like as though they are going to have a big say in the final make up of the 5 this season.

I'm almost leaning towards the Crows. They have some players in form and their midfield may be able to negate what has been one of West's strengths in their own midfield and run. Might need to see the teams first.

A Crows win really will help our cause but cant see West dropping this one, West by 3-4 goals

West by 29 points

We've been lucky usually having to play the crows on a friday night before the AFL side plays that weekend so have played some very weak sides. This will definitely be the strongest we have encountered.

Will be close all day and hopefully the bloods fall on the right side of the ledger.

M.Crouch dropped by the AFL side so should be playing for Adelaide

Strange game, with the last quarter a great advertisement for those against AFL sides on the SANFL.

Adelaide scored 4 quick goals into the breeze to start proceedings and looked far too big, quick and skilled for West. Somehow, over the next 2 1/2 quarters, eedt played enough good footy to outscore Adelaide by 8 goals to 4 to get within a few points.

Given a 10 point deficit at 3/4 time and West's usually strong last quarters, it looked set for a tight finish. That idea was set aside in 5 minutes, with Adelaide kicking 3 goals and hitting the post twice. From there, it wasn't a contest.

With 18 listed players and a lot of quality, including 3 players over 200cms, Adelaide just looked too tall, too big, too skilled and too professional for a pretty good SANFL side.

It's a worry and it was a bit sad, even allowing for my bias, to watch such an artificial mismatch.

For West, Chris Schmidt again stood out, supported by Travis Tuck and Jason Porplyzia.

A proper game next week against Sturt.

So much for the theory that as the AFL sides gain injuries that they have less AFL listed players and become a more even competition for the SANFL sides. Farcical and unfortunate that this is where we now find the competition..

Ben W wrote:So much for the theory that as the AFL sides gain injuries that they have less AFL listed players and become a more even competition for the SANFL sides. Farcical and unfortunate that this is where we now find the competition..

That theory still holds, it's just that when they don't have a long injury list they can be harder to beat than traditional SANFL clubs. For some strange reason this doesn't get a lot of airplay from the powers that be.

We saw the opposite ends of the spectrum on Sunday.

A few weeks ago West were no match for a powerful Port lineup and were thumped by a very strong Adelaide team yesterday, while Sturt had a good win against a much weaker (for some reason) Magpies. It's swings and roundabouts, but that has a big effect on the competition.

Port were actually stronger as far as names in the line-up yesterday, but Sturt smashed us in the first half and we never got back into it.

Don't underestimate Sturts performance yesterday.

I won't. They beat us at Unley and we play them next week.