A CYCLONE is headed for Collingwood.

But we’re not talking performance-enhancing drugs or Nathan Buckley’s coaching future. Nope, cyclone Crow is on a collision course with the Magpies at Etihad Stadium on Saturday.

TEX WALKER SHOWS HIS SOFTER SIDE

If the radical transformation of the Adelaide Crows is here to stay, it will hit hard. Very hard.

New coach Phil Walsh — the long-time, straight-talking assistant — has flipped this side’s playing style on its head, rekindling memories of the “Crowbots” defensive machine of 2006.

And it was a low-key NAB Challenge press conference that offered the clearest insight into how Walsh engineered a Round 1 poleaxing of North Melbourne that shocked the competition.

Asked about his players’ well-known appetite for contested ball after beating Port Adelaide, Walsh replied: “Some people talk contested possessions, I actually talk ground ball. One of the stats, and the players have heard it to death off me, is ground ball differential. That’s the stat I look at.”

There is a widespread assumption among the footy public that contested ball is critical to side’s winning games. It isn’t. According to Champion Data, if your side won contested ball in 2014 it won 57 per cent of games. If it won loose ball, it won 70 per cent of games.

But if it won ground ball — a combination of both — it won the match 75 per cent of the time.

media_camera Rory Sloane swoops on the loose ball ahead of North Melbourne champ Brent Harvey. Picture: Sarah Reed

Hawthorn stormed to back-to-back flags with this philosophy. The Hawks won the 2014 premiership with 25 fewer hard ball gets than their opposition. But Alastair Clarkson’s men ranked second in the competition for loose ball gets at +97, and third for ground ball gets at +88.

In the same season under Brenton Sanderson, Adelaide ranked second for hard ball gets and last for loose ball gets. They went in totally the opposite direction to Hawthorn and finished 10th.

But a new ball-gathering priority and a thirst for “manic pressure” has turned the Crows into a different side. They ambushed the Kangaroos with 34 forward-half tackles (ranked second for Round 1) and a forward half pressure rating of 1.81 (3rd).

media_camera Cam Ellis-Yolmen stops Andrew Swallow in his tracks.

Adelaide might be the only side in the AFL to employ a full-ground 18-man press, and North couldn’t handle it. The Roos had 13 kick-ins on Sunday and could only manage one inside 50m result. Nine other kick-ins were intercepted in the Crows’ swarm and the remaining three ended in a stoppage.

The Crows implemented Walsh’s plan to perfection, amassing 19 more loose ball gets than North Melbourne, the biggest difference in Round 1, and 34 more uncontested possessions — the second-biggest.

Not that Walsh is even close to getting carried away. He may be the calm in the storm heading for Collingwood.

“There’s an old saying: ‘Beware the early Crow’,” Walsh said after the North demolition.

“It’s Round 1, we all need to just take a little bit of a cold shower. If you bathe in the glory for too long you’ll end up straight down the shower (drain) the next week, I’ve seen it so many times.

“This isn’t going to happen overnight. I’m not Mandrake (the magician). It comes down to whether the players are prepared to do the hard work. Win the ground ball, win the tackle.”