There comes a night with every coach where the feeling that they’ve reached the end of the line simply cannot be mistaken for anything else.

When it’s not hyperbole, or the instant hit of pessimism that follows a particularly galling loss, or any other rational factor to explain why a team and their leader has hit the brick wall of doom that 95 per cent of coaches eventually hit in this brutal, unforgiving game of ours.

Sometimes it comes with an absolute thrashing, the kind of scoreline that demands an instant and hefty swing of the axe from a footy club. Sometimes it comes after a period of off-field upheaval, when it becomes clear the man in charge has lost the support of his playing group and that his position is thusly untenable.

Or sometimes it comes on a Thursday night on home soil, with defeat to a team that had lost its past eight matches by an average of 50 points a pop, that could barely scrounge up a fit 23 off a five-day break, for whom much of the week was dominated by innuendo about how they had to pick a flatlining champion and sacrifice a home game milestone to give them the faintest sniff of an unlikely win that nobody really thought they could pull off anyway.

Adelaide’s loss to Richmond was every bit as unedifying as any 100-point loss possibly could be – for Matthew Nicks most of all.

It spoke of the myriad of ways in which his side, which seemed on the cusp of such great things less than 12 months ago, has fallen in 2024. It featured all the tactical shortcomings and structural missteps that have crucified the Crows throughout this season, damningly picked apart by a side that had naught to play for except a hell of a lot of pride.

Sure, Matt Crouch and Taylor Walker were absent; and sure, Izak Rankine continues to leave an unfillable hole in both the midfield and up forward. But the Crows weren’t coming up against a powerful opposition at full strength – this was a home game against the clear second-worst team in the competition.

This is a disaster in every shape of the word, and the two years remaining on Nicks’ contract might as well be printed with invisible ink on a sheet of two-ply toilet paper for all the good they’ll do him if something doesn’t change considerably and rapidly.

There are so many factors behind the Crows’ demise that it’s difficult to know where to begin: from the stodgy, dull chipping football that saw the most damaging team of 2023 rack up 113 marks for just 46 inside 50s, to the horrifically regular turnovers in critical spots from kicks both good and bad, to how Nick Vlastuin was left unchecked to become the latest opposition player to mop up intercept marks as will behind the ball, to this absolute coach-killer in the second term just when the game seemed to have shifted their way.

But the most damning of all on Thursday night came in how they allowed Richmond to turn their most glaring weakness into the strength that won them the match: scores from stoppages.

The Tigers’ midfield has ranked last or near enough to it the season in every measure you could care to name: they’re equal-bottom for centre clearances, almost four a game behind anyone else for total clearances, second-last ahead of only North Melbourne for contested possessions (and three per game behind third-last), and even last for tackles.

Unsurprisingly, that manifests in the Tigers sitting comfortably bottom for scores from stoppages, averaging 20.7 points per game from that source. As a point of comparison, the Crows are fourth-worst in this regard… and are nine points better off.

It’s the key reason why the Tigers have been so horrendous all season long, and even with Tim Taranto and Dion Prestia back in and Crouch sidelined, there was no reason for the numbers that followed.

The Crows coughed up five goals from stoppages on Thursday night – three of them from forward 50 clearances, and three of them in the third quarter alone, in which the Tigers rammed on five goals in a 15-minute match-deciding burst.

The numbers alone are awful, but watching it unfold was uglier still. This was a Crows team with absolutely no idea how to defend from stoppage, either structurally or individually, and allowed itself to get picked off by the worst clearance team in the competition.

You can point to Crouch and Rankine missing, or Taranto and Prestia being back, as a reason for this – and no doubt that played a part in the Tigers winning the clearances count for just the fourth time all season – 37-32 for those counting at home, including a 12-8 centre bounce advantage and going +7 during that crucial 15-minute third quarter burst.

The kicker, though, is that the Tigers actually won the clearance count against Essendon two weeks ago, as well as Brisbane when they were thrashed by 100 points: and in neither match did their scoring profile improve from this source.

This was a Crows-only capitulation, and in a match decided by under two goals, was the decisive factor on Thursday night.

The Tigers’ first forward 50 stoppage goal in the third quarter was as pitiful a structural shambles as you’ll see all year – it’s honestly as bad as West Coast were last year when they were getting routinely flogged by 100 points AND giving up ten goals plus from clearances every week.

There are three telling reasons why Adelaide leak a goal here. One: the inability of Kieran Strachan to force a contest with Toby Nankervis; two: the horrendous positioning of the two spare Crows in Chayce Jones and Lachie Sholl; and three, the lack of awareness of any of the midfield group that disaster is about to strike.

Let’s start with point one – Strachan was picked in this Crows team ostensibly to provide more around the ground than the omitted Reilly O’Brien, which with four marks he probably did (though a woeful turnover to gift the Tigers one of their six third-quarter goals undid plenty of his good work).

All the same, it’s a wildly bold move to drop a stoppage specialist ruckman like O’Brien with your number one clearance player for the season, Matt Crouch, having busted his shoulder, and with Rankine also sidelined; never mind that Jordan Dawson, another first-choice midfielder, spent plenty of time up forward while dealing with a foot injury. If there was a time O’Brien’s bullocking follow-up work at ground level and ability to win first hands to the footy more than any other ruckman in the game would have been priceless, it was now.

As it happens, Nankervis bullied Strachan in the ruck for most of the night, winning a swathe more hitouts even before the Crow sat out the last quarter: here, that lack of competitiveness bit them hard.

Far, far worse, though, is where Jones and Sholl have chosen to position themselves as the spares at the contest.

Essentially, for a stoppage this close to goal, defence should be the number one priority: therefore, your loose players should be guarding the most dangerous space. Most often, that would be with one in the central corridor, and one either out wide to cut off an outlet handball, or in the Blake Acres role on the goal line to thwart a hacked kick out of congestion.

God knows where Sholl was meant to be, but as Strachan and Nankervis compete for the ball he is nowhere near any Tiger, and in a spot where he can only influence if Nankervis decides to go for a trick play with his tap and go over the back. And even if he’d won possession, there’d be little else he could do other than hack the ball long and out of immediate trouble, and back to a spot where the Tigers have two extra players.

As for Jones, he’s not close enough to impact the play that’s about to come, and neither is he far enough back to have done anything if the kick for goal was a quick bouncing snap and not the confident kick Noah Cumberland is about to pull off.

The clincher is that the Crows’ on-ballers are in a state of disarray too: Dawson, for reasons unknown, is five metres off the ball, rather than being right in the thick of the action. Rory Laird is seemingly off the ground – even more reason why Dawson needed to be closer – leaving young Max Michalanney marking the most dangerous man on the ground, Shai Bolton, and Jake Soligo as the Crows’ only representation anywhere close enough to the ball to compete.

This is where communication is key: just look at the way Collingwood have set up around stoppages in tight games when they don’t want a score to get through, which is exactly the approach Adelaide should have taken here. They pile numbers around the ball, make sure key leaders (like Dawson) are in the most likely places to influence, and they never, under any circumstances, leave the dangerous space unguarded.

What follows is the inevitable: Nankervis taps freely and clearly down to Cumberland, who has timed his run to shark the contest nicely if not perfectly as Jordon Butts trails him.

He fumbles the football momentarily, which ends up working for him because Jones, too far away to lay a tackle anyway, is tracking the footy and not the Tiger, and hangs back for a split second rather than pushing up, expecting the ball to spill out the back.

Meanwhile, Cumberland keeps running: he gathers the footy, with Brodie Smith running past more concerned about his man dashing into the goalsquare than stopping the Tiger with the ball, and just before Jones can at last arrive, snaps through the goal from directly in front.

The Crows have been set-played by the worst stoppage team in the AFL. And it’s ghastly.

The second instance of it happening might have been even worse, if only because it happened straight after Mark Keane was felled behind the play by Jacob Koschitzke, which should have given the Crows’ midfield and defence a full minute to set up their structures, spot any bugs, and gel cohesively to stop another simple Tigers goal.

And indeed, this time at least there are a few things right: one of the spares, Michalanney, is clogging up space right underneath the ruck contest in case the ball comes to the feet of the big men, while the other spare, Sholl, is directly in the corridor in front of the stoppage.

The issue here is less about structure and more about system: Will Hamill has found himself isolated against the menacing Bolton, and worst still, has let him set up outside the stoppage. Note that the more experienced Dawson has specifically denied his man, Taranto, that same advantage.

Once again, there’s a set play loading: Nankervis, this time opposed to the inexperienced James Borlase with Strachan off the ground with his groin injury, again taps it where he wants, long and over the top of Hamill to where Bolton can ideally run into open space.

Even though his path is blocked by the oncoming Sam Berry, though, the dreaded overlap has been created: just one flaw in the structure, Hamill’s positioning on Balta, has left the whole thing vulnerable. Bolton takes possession, and in the instant of time he has before Berry can wrap him up, he gets a handball free to Berry’s man, Kamdyn McIntosh, who has held his width outside and backed in Bolton to win the footy.

McIntosh kicks a superb goal as the Crows close in, but the ease with which the ball was allowed to get to him on the outside is damning – one of Laird or Dawson needed to be the one to take responsibility for Bolton, as the senior pair in there, especially with a back-up ruckman competing.

Nicks is in his fifth season as coach: the majority of his on-ball group have been there throughout his reign. It is both baffling and inexcusable to have stoppage breakdowns of this magnitude occurring at all, never mind against the worst clearance side in the competition, let alone inside defensive 50.

Take out those two goals, and who knows if they prove the difference.

The Tigers were sensationally professional in the last quarter, withstanding a series of Crows fightbacks, providing a vital counterpunch and by and large never truly looking like being overrun. The result was a fabulously well-deserved victory amid a season full of misfortune and woe, and one that confirms Adem Yze has the crux of a capable team at his disposal some years down the track.

But the story of course is the Crows, and it’s the manner in which they’re conceding goals and games as much as the conceding of them in themselves that is the big issue here.

Time has already just about ticked on Adelaide’s season: more horror shows like Thursday night’s, and Nicks’ clock will stop too. And sooner rather than later.