Jacobs happy his tall order achieved

Adelaide have stayed in touch with the eight with an upset victory over North Melbourne.

Crows ruckman Sam Jacobs gets his kick away under pressure. Picture: Sarah Reed Source: News Corp Australia

IN every team contest there is a battle that defines the result. In Adelaide-North Melbourne games, it is the duel between lead ruckmen Sam Jacobs (Crows) and Todd Goldstein (Kangaroos).

A year after Jacobs was subbed out of a losing battle with Goldstein at Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, the sixth head-to-head confrontation between the imposing ruckmen ended in the South Australian's favour.

By the Champion Data statistics, Jacobs and Goldstein locked pride and horns together for 92 minutes at Adelaide Oval on Saturday night. Jacobs won the disposal count 16-8 while proving to be far more effective in field play than Goldstein. Jacobs also won the centre hit-out count 14-10 ensuring the Crows had critical first look at the ball for centre clearances, six of which were attributed to Adelaide midfielder Patrick Dangerfield.

Jacobs has scored a victory against his supposed nemesis.

"I have no idea who came out on top," Jacobs told The Advertiser at the end of Adelaide's 36-point win. Be it modesty or not, at least Jacobs was not beating himself up in the belief he had failed against Goldstein.

"If I won the centre clearances, that is good because that is an important part of the game — getting the ball going forward. And even better for us is how, after getting it out of the centre square, we locked the ball in our forward half."

The Jacobs-Goldstein storyline is growing. "And it definitely, definitely (motivates me)," Jacobs said.

"When I was drafted (to Carlton in the 2006 national rookie draft) there was a good group (of ruckmen) coming through. Matthew Lobbe is doing well at Port Adelaide. Add Goldstein and Robert Warnock and Matthew Kruezer who used to be my teammates (at Carlton) and Matty Leuenberger (at Brisbane) ... the list goes on and we have all been in the system for eight years and I love the challenge of coming up against them."

Jacobs scored himself as more effective across field play in the first half than second.

"Taking a few contested marks early on probably gave me the nudge in the first half, but you know with Goldy that he will keep coming and make for a pretty good battle," Jacobs said. "It sounds a bit in-depth, but Goldstein has longer arms than you think. Sometimes you think you have him beaten, but he just finds that little bit extra to get there. He is a very strong player, but the interesting thing is a lot of our attributes are pretty similar.

"I see a lot of the way in how I play in the way he goes about it as well."

Beyond the memory of how Goldstein has troubled him, Jacobs also carried during the week the personal burden of needing to respond for underperforming against the AFL's biggest player, Fremantle ruckman Aaron Sandilands six days earlier in Perth.

"I don't want to talk too much about last week when I was unable to match it with Sandilands, but the lesson from that was controlling the air with contested marks and giving our midfielders first use," said Jacobs after beating Goldstein 2-1 on contested marks.

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