Exclusive: “We’ve got High Expectations” - Max Michalanney

It was party time for the Crows as they leapt into the top four for the first time since Round Three with a stirring win over the Eagles on Sunday. Star Crow, Max Michalanney, stopped by to talk exclusively to Hub Adelaide post-game.

“We’ve got high expectations inside the four walls, I suppose we did [think it was possible for us to be inside the top four during pre-season],” Michalanney began.

However, the AFL is only halfway through this year, and the Crows have a difficult month ahead.

A clash with Swans in Sydney awaits next week, before they welcome the Lions to the Oval, before taking on Hawthorn in Tasmania, and this wasn’t lost on the star halfback.

“It’s good that we are in [the top four] at the moment, but there’s a lot of games to play out,” he said.

“I think over the next month we are going to be challenged with a lot of good sides, we’ve got the group to beat them. It’s making sure we play to our strengths.”

In terms of how they were going to beat the teams around them, Michalanney responded with the oldest cliche in football.

“I’ll give you a boring answer, we need to take it week to week,” the Crow joked.

The Crows defensive unit has been much improved this year, and Michalanney said it was due to the players around him:

“We’re becoming a really experienced backline at the moment,” he said.

“We’ve played a fair bit of footy together and we know what makes each other tick. I love playing alongside the boys, they are looking after each other.”

His own season has had a massive rise in form, and Michalanney said that it was his consistent pre-season:

‘There was a small couple of things that I focused on [during pre-season]. I worked pretty closely with the guys in the gym and Darren Burgess [High Performance Manager at the Crows] to improve my fitness and get that right.”

On the game itself, Michalanney was quick to praise the Eagles:

“It was a good game really, they were in it until half time and then they really tested us. It was a good four quarter effort from us and we were finally able to break them open.

“[We changed] little things around our ball movement [heading into the second half]. We were mucking around with it a little bit too much, especially in our back half. They played a fair bit of the game in their forward half, which is obviously not what we want.

“We were able to make a slight adjustment, it held us in good stead. It took a four quarter effort for us to get the win, I’m extremely proud of how we went about it.