Erin Phillips reveals the seven words from coach Matthew Clarke that have had a profound impact on the Adelaide Crows’ AFLW season

There’s no doubting this has been one special season for the Crows. As the side prepares for Sunday’s grand final, Liz Walsh takes us behind the scenes and reveals the advice from Matthew Clarke that lifted Erin Phillips and her teammates to new heights.

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Earlier this AFLW season, Adelaide coach Matthew ‘Doc’ Clarke said something to Erin Phillips that she didn’t quite understand at the time.

“Doc said: ‘Run with pure joy in your heart and with a smile on your face, like you were that kid when you were little’,” Phillips recalls.

“And I didn’t really know what he meant.

“Then it was probably the day after he said that, that I watched (my two-year-old daughter) Brooklyn just running up and down the hall, for no reason other than just running and she was smiling and laughing.

“And I thought: ‘OK, that’s what he meant’. I remember that young girl who just loved to run.

“And that was the moment I knew: Run with joy in your heart, that’s what he meant and that resonated with me.”

Crows co-captain Erin Phillips is hugged by teammate Sarah Perkins after the club’s round three win over Geelong at Norwood Oval in February. PHOTO: AFL Media

Phillips’s season, as with her teammates, has been about running around a football oval with joy in their hearts. And that joy hasn’t just shown in their results (this season, the Crows have lost only their first game and go into Sunday’s grand final on a seven-game winning steak).

More importantly, that joy has shown itself in other ways off the ground.

EARLIER this month, an online video discussion about athlete welfare in the United States went viral.

In it, one of the most powerful executives in sport — the NBA’s commissioner, Adam Silver — quoted 12-time NBA All-Star basketballer Isaiah Thomas as saying: “Championships are won on the bus”.

Adam Silver on the "unhappiness" of NBA players caused by social media and being isolated is very interesting and worth a listen. pic.twitter.com/tRhTB7n0F2

— gifdsports (@gifdsports) March 3, 2019

I have been on a team bus with this Crows AFLW team. It was back in mid-January when the club invited me to join them in Darwin for their four-day pre-season camp.

I have written a lot about the Crows this season, but I haven’t told the story of being on a bus with them, not only because “what happens on the team bus, stays on the team bus”, but because it didn’t seem relevant.

Until now.

“Championships are won on the bus.”

There’s been a common thread among the players when they speak publicly about each other this year: they talk about team spirit and a special bond and a love and care for one another that has influenced their on-field performance.

I can tell you that’s true, because I’ve seen it on their bus, that before the 2019 AFLW season had even started, this skilled and supremely fit Crows team, was already a tight unit.

I was lucky enough to sit at the back of the bus and laugh and sing along with the girls as we headed for a day of swimming and relaxing at Darwin’s Litchfield National Park.

Adelaide Crows AFLW players enjoying the cool water at Florence Falls in Litchfield National Park, Northern Territory, for their pre-season camp that included a trial game against Fremantle.

Erin Phillips and Matthew Clarke have a heart to heart in Darwin. Picture: Liz Walsh

Chelsea Randall was driving the bus, because of course she has a heavy vehicle driver’s licence. Erin Phillips was sitting right up next to her, acting as chief music director.

This was not a bus filled with athletes all “headphones on, eyes down” like you see so often these days.

This was a bus filled with engaged, funny — rather loud — athletes who were simply enjoying each other’s company.

The girls swapped stories of their recent Christmases and shared photos of their dogs. They sang with gusto the songs of Florence and the Machine and Amy Winehouse and they told jokes. Some danced.

Two of them were trying to convince everyone else that they were distantly related through their great-grandfathers (they’re not).

Just this week I talked to Phillips about that pre-season camp and she said: “I think those moments in Darwin, throughout the season they build and transition and come into how you play on the field.

“It’s incredible how those experiences, those times together, the team building shows on the field … it shines through.

“The majority of us can’t sing — one, I’m included in that — but we’re just having fun and I think we’ve done a really good job this year of enjoying it all.”

Remove these players from that team bus, and their spirit and bond is seen elsewhere too.

It shows while the squad is running around the Adelaide Football Club’s West Lakes oval on a Tuesday or Thursday evening, music blaring, shouts of encouragement echoing across the field.

It shows in assistant coach Narelle Smith who’s bobbing to Beyonce’s female anthem “Who Run the World?” and she points at the players every time the singer shrills: ‘Girls!”.

The Crows players celebrate during their 66-point demolition of Geelong in the preliminary final at Adelaide Oval. PHOTO: Mark Brake/Getty Images

It shows while they’re courtside supporting the Adelaide Lighting or heading for a barbecue at Eddie Betts’ house.

There’s a trio who performs a perfect rendition of songs from the Sister Act movies in the showers. There’s another whose singing of Kesha’s Praying is so good, it was requested as a birthday present.

This season’s away games haven’t bothered this group, they’ve loved them as they gather in rooms and play cards or Jenga as they wait for game time.

I’ve seen that when Justine Mules and Ang Foley get laughing they can’t stop. How devastated the whole squad was when first ruck Rhiannon Metcalfe — the 185cm ruck everyone calls “Beast” — went down in a trial game against Fremantle in Darwin after rupturing her ACL and second ruck Jasmyn Hewett season also ended when she injured her ankle.

Real ruck problems for @CrowsAFLW, with Jasmyn Hewett (ankle) joining Rhiannon Metcalfe (knee) on crutches. @TheTiserSport pic.twitter.com/rmfl5W2CS8

— Liz Walsh (@lizwalsh77) January 19, 2019

I’ve seen that the fringe players who don’t always get a game are just as loved and revered as those who do.

That when you get Courtney Cramey and Chelsea Randall started on “the good old days of women’s footy” that you won’t get them to stop.

I have giggled at their system of internal “fines” as they dish them out to various players.

For Irish recruit Ailish Considine, she knew from the outset that this was one special team.

“I knew that from day one, when I arrived here,” she told me.

“I’ve been part of a lot of different teams, whether that be (Gaelic) football or camogie (Irish stick-and-ball team sport for women) and sometimes you get good vibes or bad vibes … you pick up whether it’s going to be a good season or not and whether the girls are going to gel, but as soon as I arrived here … it’s the perfect mix and it’s so hard to find. I knew from day one that this was a special team.”

Adelaide Crows coach Matthew Clarke swimming with the team at Florence Falls in Litchfield National Park in January, 2019 when the team was in the Northern Territory for its pre-season camp.

Ask Clarke what he thinks of his players and he says this: “I am very proud of everything they’ve done and hopefully will do.

“(Before I got this job) from the outside looking in, I knew there was a special quality about the group because you could see it.

“But for everybody who gets involved, once you get to know them and spend time with them, then that admiration just grows.

“They are a very good group of very high-quality people and when they do succeed and they have success, you feel happy for them and proud of them because of the work they’ve put in.

“They’re a good group.”

Win or lose on Sunday, this Crows AFLW season has been defined by seven short words: “Run with pure joy in your heart” and it’s been an honour to watch.