Phil Harper on AFLW expansion, conferences, the upcoming draft and the premiership defence of the Crows in 2020
Crows AFLW’s head of football administration Phil Harper sits down with Liz Walsh to chat through all the hot topics in women’s football ahead of Tuesday’s AFLW draft.
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AS the Crows prepare to draft eight new players into their stacked women’s squad on Tuesday, LIZ WALSH sits down with the club’s head of football administration PHIL HARPER and chats all things AFLW fixture, the end of the NT alliance, their 2020 premiership defence and the battle against knee injuries
Draft strategy
The Crows have maintained the majority of their 2019 AFLW premiership team, including co-captain Chelsea Randall who was speculated to return to her hometown of Perth and join expansion club West Coast.
Under AFLW rules, each club must delist six players at the end of every season and head into the draft with six picks. This was going to be the Crows strategy until talented midfielder Hannah Martin did her knee playing for the NT Thunder in July and as such she was placed on the club’s “inactive” list and the Crows picked up an extra selection for her.
Then, earlier this month rookie Maisie Nankivell was also placed on the “inactive” list after she accepted a playing contract with the Adelaide Thunderbirds.
So Harper said the club’s draft strategy would be to top up its list with three or four players straight out of the under-18s system and a further three or four players aged between 21 and 26 straight out of the SANFL.
“The good part is that there is some real talent in South Australia in the SANFLW,” he said.
“The increase in the ability in the local competition is starting to hit and there’s a wave coming in behind it of young 15-, 16-, 17-year-old girls who are damn good, so that’s great.”
Harper said watching the talent over the SANFLW season there is at least 15-20 players who would be good enough to play in the AFLW, but the Crows had only eight spots to fill.
“I think there’ll be some others, you’ll find, who may play elsewhere in 2020 and we wish those girls all the best,” he said.
“We understand that Port will probably be coming in, in a year or two, but we don’t know when exactly it is, so therefore we’ve got to continue to top ourselves up with young talent … and the great thing at the moment is that the SANFLW are producing players.”
The Crows will go into Tuesday’s draft with picks 14, 37, 46, 53, 68, 83, 100, 102.
One of those picks will be used to get women’s footy stalwart Courtney Gum, who left Greater Western Sydney at the end of the 2019 season and returned to SA.
ACL injuries
The Crows went into its pre-season last year having sustained no ACL injuries in its first two seasons. That all ended in January, 2019 when ruck Rhiannon Metcalfe did her ACL while playing a trial game against Fremantle in Darwin.
From that point, three more players suffered season-ending knee injuries: Chloe Scheer and Erin Phillips in the grand final, followed by Martin in July.
Harper said the club was looking into increasing its preventive procedures.
“We thought that was working pretty well, until last season came around,” he said. “We’ll have a look at exactly what we were doing and see if there’s something more we can do to try and prevent those injuries, because it’s devastating to see any player on our list get a knee injury, it’s hard work.
“And those girls, Erin, Chloe and Rhi, they’re back running and doing all of that but it’s hard work; it’s hard work to even back to the point they are now and there’s some tears associated with it.
“So, one, we’ll look at what we’re doing and see what we can do more to try and prevent. And two, we’ll continue to throw our support behind those girls, who are all going well (in their rehab), even though they’ve had little niggles and hiccups along the way, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ACL rehab that goes niggle-free.”
Harper said the club wasn’t placing Phillips, Scheer or Metcalfe on the 2020 “inactive” list and would give them every chance to play next year.
“We think they’re all some chance to play, but really, we won’t be pushing them into a situation where we’re wanting them to play and then taking risks with them,” he said.
“We’ll just have to wait and see and we won’t really know how that’s tracking until we get to January-ish. But the indication they all give is that they want to play, they all want to be ready for round one. I think that’s a bit far-fetched, but the three people we’re talking about, never underestimate the power of their minds.”
Harper said the AFL was doing a lot of research on the occurrence of ACL injuries in women’s football.
“They’re as concerned as anyone about it, they don’t want to be sending people out and risking injury, so they’ve been doing some research on preventive methods to try and help these girls to not be predisposed to these sorts of injuries because they are devastating, for everyone involved.”
Crows and AFLNT part ways
In August it was revealed that Adelaide had parted ways with its AFLW partner AFLNT. Harper praised the club’s former alliance with AFLNT as “vital” to the Crows success, which has seen it win two premierships in three season.
“When you consider Ange Foley, Sally Riley, Stevie-Lee Thompson, Danielle Ponter, have all been part of our team, without (AFLNT) we wouldn’t have been as successful as we were,” he said.
But the ending of the partnership, means that Darwin’s TIO Stadium will no longer host any home games for the Crows in 2020, so Harper alluded to the fact that perhaps a new suburban stadium might come into play in the fixture.
Last season, Unley Oval hosted the Crows when they took on GWS, and more than 7000 attended. But the majority of Adelaide home games were played at Norwood Oval.
“Norwood has been great for us and we think it has been best for our fans,” Harper said. “But it’s still in redevelopment and whether they’ll be ready for us next year or not is still up for debate.
“Unley Oval was fantastic with the one game we had, the problem with that is that there’s a cricket oval there and we can’t play until a certain date, but we’re keen to do that again because we thought that was the perfect atmosphere for an AFLW game of football.
“Another one we’re looking at trying this year is Richmond Oval, West Adelaide’s Oval.
“Our philosophy is try and take the game around to different venues to people. We want to be the team for everyone, so there’s a possibility of playing some games at Richmond next year.
“Hopefully we get four games in Adelaide and four away and we’ll see what happens with Norwood and how ready for us they are.”
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Conference system
Harper reaffirmed that despite the lopsided nature of the 2019 AFLW conference system, the Crows were supportive of it continuing in 2020. Four new teams will be entering the competition — Richmond, West Coast, Gold Coast and St Kilda — and the 14 teams will be split into two conferences and play eight minor round games, with the top three in each conference facing off in a three-round finals series.
Harper said the Crows were comfortable with that.
Chances of going back-to-back
Harper said the club was putting aside its 2019 premiership as it planned its 2020 assault.
“Unfortunately everyone starts at nil-all again,” he said.
“But we do have the majority of the team, and I think we’ll be strong, but we also do have some injury problems.
“Four of our best players may or may not be there. We’re really confident that the crew we’ve got coming in, in the draft, there’ll be some good players in among that, so we feel we can do well again with or without the knee reconstruction girls.
“But the last thing we’d be talking about is premierships because you’ve actually got to get there first and when you start talking about premierships before you’ve even played a game, that’s always a recipe for disaster.”
CBA deadlock
The AFLW players are currently debating their collective bargaining agreement with the AFL Players’ Association and a fortnight ago 30 per cent of the total playing group voted down the current agreement and until a deal can be reached to ensure 75 per cent of players agree with the CBA, the 2020 is in a holding pattern.
Before that vote was taken, Harper said his understanding of the situation was that the Crows players were comfortable with the agreement.
“There’s some other girls at some other clubs interstate who aren’t as comfortable and are looking for some clarification as much as anything … hopefully it comes to a head (soon) and everyone can sign off on it and we can move on and set some dates for the games and the pre-season.
“I think all players in the competition would eventually like the AFLW to be a full 15-20 week season with finals … and I think all of us in the industry would like that eventually too.
“At the moment there is a cost associated with that, that the industry probably can’t bear. But eventually it will be able to afford that.
“That progression is slower than players probably would like, but … if you look at where this competition started payments-wise, length of season, benefits, prestige, only three years ago and you look at where it is now, it’s massive.
“And we all just witnessed a grand final at Adelaide Oval with 53,000 people there and I never thought we’d see in three years. I thought we’d struggle to see it in 30 years, so it’s come a long way.”
Expansion
With four new teams coming into the competition next year, Harper said it could end up being a stretch to find adequate player talent given two new teams (Geelong and North Melbourne) entered in 2019.
“I thought that two new teams last season integrated into the competition really well and I thought that was good,” he said.
“To throw another four in this coming season will be a stretch and a struggle, but I also understand that the AFL — and I’m on that AFLW competition committee — want to get all teams represented as soon as they possibly can, without doing damage to the competition.
“However, once we’ve got four new teams next year, I think we’ll need to settle for maybe another year and then we’ll be able to get all 18 teams in.
“I look forward to the day we’ve got all 18 teams in. The quicker we get the last four teams in, the better.
“Is there enough talent to support all the 18 teams at the moment? It will be a stretch.
“Will there be enough talent to support all 18 teams in another three or four years? Yes, I reckon there definitely will be because there’s a tsunami of young girls who started three or four years ago and that tsunami will have hit the shore in about four years and we’ll have plenty of talent to pick from, which will be great.”
Grand final memories
Harper still reflects on the Crows’ 45-point grand final win over Carlton at Adelaide Oval in front of 53,000 people on March 31.
“I struggled to concentrate on the game that day because I was just blown away by the enormity of what was happening in front of me,” he said.
“We were sitting in the coaches box and (assistant) Narelle Smith’s in there, sitting next to me and she’s been involved in women’s football for a hell of a lot longer than me and as the oval was filling up it was just before the bounce, when I said: ‘Oh look, they’ve opened up that top stand’ and (coach Matthew) ‘Doc’ (Clarke) said: ‘C’mon, concentrate, concentrate!’.
“And halfway through the first quarter I could see they’d opened up the top of the Riverbank Stand and because I was supposed to be concentrating, I nudged Narelle under the table and said: ‘Have a look at that’.
“That was a great day, in sport in general. The fact that you could get 53,000 people to come, I never ever thought I would see that in my lifetime.”