Adelaide not out of finals race as league awaits AFL's ruling on Essendon Adelaide coach Brenton Sanderson congratulates Daniel Talia after the win over North Melbourne. CROWS coach Brenton Sanderson's summer vision of football history being created this winter is closer to a bizarre reality. Adelaide will miss the AFL top eight. But the Crows next month could become the first team in VFL-AFL history to claim a finals berth from ninth position. This was the sales pitch Sanderson delivered to his shattered Crows on Tuesday- two days after their incredible collapse in Showdown XXXV - to give his players an incentive to avoid a ho-hum passage in the last month of the home-and-away series. It's working. Adelaide cleared away a North Melbourne unit that initially seemed to lack any sense of urgency or understanding finals also were beckoning for the Kangaroos, on the more conventional route of eighth spot. Next it will be the Western Bulldogs. Then the hapless Melbourne with former Crows coach Neil Craig returning to West Lakes for Adelaide's final game at AAMI Stadium. And on August 25 - six days before the Crows' home-and-away season closer against West Coast in Perth - the AFL Commission could elevate Adelaide from ninth to becoming the first AFL team to play in finals on the elimination of a higher-ranked opponent. That is Essendon, of course. What Adelaide would do in September, 20 years after its miraculous 1997 premiership triumph, is hard to read ... or, more to the point, hard to imagine after the grinding workover of the Kangaroos. The patched-up Crows did exactly what was asked of them by their coach and expected by their club management when there is need to build hope for season 2014 when more history is on the line at the new Adelaide Oval. Ruckman Sam Jacobs overcame his personal jinx with Kangaroos giant Todd Goldstein - and held a critical mark late in the game. Captain Nathan van Berlo did a masterful job in tagging veteran Kangaroos playmaker Brent Harvey - and there was no panicked rollover to another spotfire, such as Daniel Wells, in the second half. Adelaide has a better midfield with Rory Sloane and Brad Crouch and a more fluid defence with Ricky Henderson. But the goalkicking efficiency and tackling effectiveness of the Crows still leaves too much work to be done before Adelaide can be considered dangerous to a top-eight side. And the historic footnote of the game is Adelaide did hometown rival Port Adelaide a favour by giving the eighth-ranked Power a two-win buffer with three matches to play.