Crows birdman Burton to fly again

Adelaide's livewire forward Brett Burton will make his much-anticipated return from
a knee reconstruction in the SANFL on Sunday, and he does not intend to bide his
time in the local league for long.
Crows coach Neil Craig, who has demoted youngster Taylor Walker after several quiet
weeks, said 31-year-old Burton was planning to play a full game for Woodville West
Torrens and had gone so far as to quiz Craig about a return to the AFL side this
week.
"Brett's not thinking (of playing) a half, as you would expect because he doesn't do
anything in halves," Craig said on Friday.
"He's in the (Eagles) league side, which is great credit to (coach) Ron Fuller to do
that for us.
"He's ready to play and if it means a full game of footy, let's go for it.
"He can't do any more than what he's done in terms of training and preparation.
"He even floated past me a couple of weeks ago asking to come straight back into the
AFL team, which I half expected - I like his attitude."
The fortunes of Burton and Walker are likely to be linked for the remainder of the
year, as both can play the mid-sized forward's role that has fit so well into a
revamped Crows attacking structure in 2009.
Walker's recent downturn has afforded Craig the chance to try out young talls Shaun
McKernan and James Sellar against the Tigers, and both will be auditioning for one
spot alongside Ivan Maric and Kurt Tippett.
The slightly experimental nature of Adelaide's line-up for Saturday suggests an
element of forward planning, though Craig dismissed at length the possibility his
players could be complacent about playing a side whose season was effectively over
several weeks ago.
"I don't detect it (complacency), the key thing there is we don't have anything to
be complacent about," said Craig.
"Now if we'd won like Geelong have won, or 13 games without a miss like St Kilda and
Geelong, I think you can put your hand up and say you're pretty good in the day's
competition.
"Certainly we have nothing to be complacent about.
"We've focused on Richmond this week - they have a great capacity to score quickly.
"They've had a lot of quarters where they've kicked seven-eight goals in a quarter,
and often when you do that, as we found out against the Western Bulldogs, that can
be good enough to win.
"They're a very offensive team, so some of our defensive things we were poor at last
week against Sydney, we can't afford to be poor at those this week.
"We understand it's still going to be a task for us to make the eight if you look at
our draw and the current form of sides, no guarantee we'll make the eight.
"We've got eight (wins) and I think maybe 13 you're going to have to win to get in."