The last time Sydney beat Adelaide, John Howard was Prime Minister, Ricky Ponting was a rookie Test captain and only a handful of people had heard of Barack Obama.

That was way back in 2004, which also happened to be the year Neil Craig began coaching the Crows after the hurried exit of Gary Ayres.

In round 15, his team were beaten by Paul Roos' Swans in a slog at the SCG, a result that has not been repeated in six games since.

Most of those have been tight contests, the margins falling between extremes of 41 and seven points.

It is for this reason that Sydney can enter the fixture with reason to believe they have a strong chance, just as Adelaide cannot afford a second's complacency, particularly after a poor round one loss to Fremantle in Perth.

Of real concern for coach Neil Craig - and of some encouragement to the Swans - Adelaide's tackling and stoppage work were both conspicuously ordinary at vital times, namely the second and fourth quarters that saw them blown apart by a Dockers side not expected to dominate this year.

Tackling has become a key indicator of pressure on an opponent, after the astronomical number of tackles consistently delivered by a pitiless St Kilda throughout 2009.

"We had a couple of really poor tackles that our supporters would've seen," said Craig.

"Both sides in terms of the volume had something similar, I don't think there was a big discrepancy, but it will get down to the fierceness and the quality and efficiency of the tackle.

"I can put a tackle on you but if you can lay the ball off, it's not wasted energy but those tackles need to be able to stop the play and disrupt the chain of events. That's the tackle you want.

"You've got to be able to nail them, and we had some good tackles against Freo, particularly when we were playing our best footy, and we had some substandard tackles, particularly in the second quarter."

Adelaide's attack has been bolstered by the return of Jason Porplyzia and Brett Burton, but Craig argued that it was his side's movement of the ball, so crisp and clean in the latter half of 2009, that would be the best way to break out of a rut of low scoring to start this year.

"Last year we struggled to kick a score for a period of time with Kurt Tippett, Chris Knights, Porplyzia up there, and our ball movement improved," he said.

"So if you asked that question this time last year, I'd say it was our ball movement because those personnel were there and then we started to kick some bigger scores.

"I probably will always lean towards ball movement, because if you can get that really crisp and quick, it does matter who's up there but you can get away with a slightly different structure.

"If you can get your ball movement and some talent up there, which hopefully we aim to do as soon as we possibly can, that's the ultimate for us."

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