Every week it seems like there is history being written in the AFL.
Some of this is welcomed, memorable and celebrated, such as when Scott Pendlebury broke the games record earlier this year, or when Lance Franklin notched the 1,000-goal mark in 2022.
Moments like these are cherished throughout each club's fanbase and reflects the long history of the league and sport.
Other slices of history are far more trivial. Last week, Sam Walsh set the record for the most disposals in the Wildcard Finals round. While the stat is interesting, it is not necessarily illustrative of a feat of great importance.
Nonetheless, it provides colour to the rich tapestry that is Australian football.
And there are some feats that players and coaches avoid like the plague.
Many football fans know the tale of Kevin Murray. The former Roys stalwart managed to play 333 games, all without winning a single final — a league record.
While his career was rich and storied, eventually earning him Legend status in the Hall of Fame, the achievement underscored the futility of playing for Fitzroy through most of the second half of the 20th century.
Though never winning a VFL final, Murray did manage to play in a finals win during a lucrative mid-career stint at East Perth in 1966 on the way to a losing Grand Final against Perth.
This Saturday night Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks is set to, at least temporarily, claim his own slice of footballing ignominy.
Nicks will join Alec Hall as the coaches to steer their sides through the most VFL/AFL games without winning a final.
For those who don't immediately recognise the name Alec Hall, his last game as coach came more than a century ago.
Over the last two years Nicks's Crows have won the second most regular season games. Last year's minor premiership season was cut short with a straight sets exit.
This year the Crows are already on their last chance with a rampaging Bulldogs ahead of them.
Nicks has quietly rebuilt his side's biggest question mark. But in the Bulldogs, the Crows face a test designed to test this weakness in full.
Mayhem in the middle
Fresh in the mind of Nicks, and all Crows fans, is how their 2025 season came to an end.
Like all sides who fall short of their end goal, reflection on their failings quickly sets in.
For Nicks, the message on what went wrong was clear, and last year's disappointment has put them in a stronger place for this year.
"I think we're ahead of last year," Nicks said after their round 24 win over the Giants, despite being "a little lower on the ladder."
"We've been doing a lot of work around what it was we didn't get right last year. Under that immense pressure that Collingwood and Hawthorn brought last year we weren't able to execute and deliver our game on our game plan."
That pressure around the contest is arguably what brought their once-promising 2025 season undone. Against Hawthorn, the Crows struggled both at contests both at stoppage and in general play, with the Hawks midfield unit gaining control of the game.
Starved of opportunity with ball in hand, the Crows' defence could only do so much to hold the wave of Hawks back.
The Hawks ended that final with a six-clearance advantage and 20 more post-clearance ground ball gets. Starved of the ball, the Crows were left passengers in a finals series that they were meant to drive from the front.
At the most basic level, only part of the contest game needed adjustment from the outside. The Crows finished the 2025 season leading for post-clearance ground ball gets and contested possessions.
They were relatively weak at stoppage, however, with a negative clearance differential across the year.
But that hid a slide against the best of the best.
The Crows struggled more against good opposition midfields than most other contenders, perhaps the canary in the coalmine for their finals struggles.
This is despite their units at either end of the ground largely holding up their ends of the bargain.
The Crows defence in 2025 and 2026 has actually gotten stronger against the best sides in the league. They conceded just 1.47 points per inside 50 this year — better than any team's full season record.
The figures were even starker last year. While the Crows concede more in games against good sides, this has largely been down to an increased volume of inside 50s their defence has to protect against.
It's yet another mark of honour for the severely underrated Adelaide backline. Over the past two years the Crows defence has arguably been the strongest defensive unit in the league, despite the lack of individual acknowledgement.
Only one Crows defender, Wayne Milera, has made the All-Australian team in this time despite the depth and strength of their taller options.
While their forward line has had a rotating list of players contribute it has been a little stronger when it matters most.
The territory battle at the contest, particularly up the ground and at stoppage, is so important for one of the Crows' other weaknesses.
Despite their defensive miserliness, their backline has struggled to transition the ball from defensive 50 and the defensive half to create scoring opportunities.
It means the Crows can absorb the pressure of opposition attacks, but sometimes struggle to get the game back on their terms in this way.
Without the benefit of winning the territory battle, or control of the footy at the contest, it can make a spellbinding side look pedestrian at best.
The shift
This has spurred the Adelaide brains trust into action. Throughout this year Nicks has experimented with different looks up the ground.
Bodies have floated through the middle and up forward to try to execute when it matters most.
The highest profile change through the year was one involving a player who missed last year's finals altogether.
Since he entered the league with Gold Coast, Izak Rankine has long been viewed as one of the game's most damaging attacking players. He is the type of player that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck, or your eyes quickly dart back to the TV if the commentator mentions his name in excited tones.
His 2025 season ended not due to form or injury, but rather as a consequence of using a homophobic slur towards a Collingwood player in round 23. Suspended for four matches, Rankine admitted his mistake and apologised publicly and privately.
It is always difficult to judge atonement and sincerity from a distance, but Rankine has made further efforts to build a relationship with the Rainbow Crows supporter group, which has in turn praised the progress made.
Some fans, both of Adelaide and the sport more broadly, may need more time to evaluate his response to the incident.
Others, particularly a large cohort of Crows fans, believed the punishment to be too severe from the outset.
Regardless of your stance, Rankine appears to be choosing his own course in making amends for his grave misstep.
Rankine's on field evolution in 2026 is far easier to evaluate than anything off field.
This year Rankine has been deployed full time in the middle of the ground for the first time in his career. The results have been dramatic.
Since the shift, Rankine has been about the most damaging player in the competition, with his previous skill in limited opportunities scaling up when foisted around the ball more often.
The tipping point for Nicks to throw Rankine through the middle more was making sure the young Crow fit with the defence first mindset of the side.
"I've always wanted to play midfield." Rankine told AFC.com.au earlier this month.
"I just had to fix up my two-way running, understanding the game, and when the opposition gets momentum against us how to mentally stay in the game and not get frustrated.
"I've found that the way I can get more of those opportunities is really delving into the defensive side of the game, getting back and helping the defenders, and being an option for them when they get stuck."
It's hard to overstate the growth in Rankine's game. Rankine has moved his predominantly front-half game to impact across the ground.
Defensively, Rankine has increasingly involved himself at contest and tracked his opponent while retaining that attacking flair that makes his game so appealing.
In that time, Adelaide has become even stronger at the contest without suffering on the defensive side. Rankine provides an explosive attacking strength that few other sides can boast, and his improved defensive effort has cost the Crows little the other way.
Rankine is not the only adjustment the Crows have made in the middle through the year.
The Crows have exposed players like Jake Soligo and Brayden Cook at the contest, with other experiments along the way. Instead of direct results on a week to week basis, it appears that Nicks is attempting to expose a wider group to action in the middle in order to maximise his options come September.
Perhaps the last shift might be their biggest, as over the past month the Crows have shifted recent draftee Dan Curtin to the guts in order to provide a vastly different look.
At 197cm and with the build of a key position player, Curtin may be the league's biggest full-time midfielder.
If it sticks, Curtin might provide a midfield option that few other sides have seen before.
"He's still got so much upside in his game. We haven't really scratched the surface there yet," Nicks said.
"I think we see Dan as a midfielder moving forward. We feel like he's got the football intelligence, the execution and the awareness that you need to be a midfielder.
"He's unique in that he's such a big body, so he's a tough match-up. He's still a very young player that's still learning a fair bit about the game. But it's exciting for us."
Curtin presents opponents a rare challenge of raw size alongside unquestioned footballing ability, similar to Patrick Cripps and experiments with ruck-mids such as Mark Blicavs and Luke Jackson.
Curtin's exposure to different roles across his short professional career has also gifted him with a sense of defensive responsibility when running through the middle — key to executing the Crows' game plan.
A meeting with the biggest midfield test
Given how much of their focus has been on building their game at the contest, it is somewhat fitting that their first finals test comes against arguably the league's most damaging contested side on their day.
While the Bulldogs are entering September with a depleted forward line and a defence with more questions than answers, few can question the raw ability and system of their midfield unit.
For a side entrenched in the mid-table hustle over the last two years the Dogs are a side few want to see when the footy starts to get serious.
It's that ability in the middle of the ground, led by All-Australian duo Marcus Bontempelli and Ed Richards, that is set to stress test Nicks's personnel changes.
While the Crows have improved their work at the contest as the year has progressed, the results across the whole year paint a similar picture to that of 2025.
Looking at the entire season likely undersells where they sit right now. While they lost the clearance battle to Fremantle in round 23, they dominated the post-clearance contested battle — crucial to maintaining field position.
Despite Adelaide's strong performances over the last two years, rumbling from Victoria has suggested that Nicks must steer the Crows to victory to retain his job.
"I understand the narrative, it's part of this industry, [but] it's probably not something I could talk to," Nicks said.
If, for whatever reason, the Crows do the unthinkable and remove Nicks from his post after the season, it would be a move without little recent precedent.
The most recent coach to lead his side to at least 33 wins over his last two seasons in charge before leaving his role was Mick Malthouse in his "negotiated handover" to Nathan Buckley at Collingwood.
Few, if any, coaches have been legitimately sacked in league history with so many home and away wins immediately prior
