Crows need to bolster list as well as refreshing it as they analyse what went wrong against Gold Coast
Adelaide has been a passive player in the trade market while losing key personnel for years and it’s catching up with them. Perhaps it’s time list management bolstered the list as well as refreshed it like Port Adelaide, Brisbane and Hawthorn.
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The easy answer to why Adelaide has fallen off such a dramatic cliff since 2017 is to look at who they’ve lost, but maybe it’s time to look at who they’ve brought in.
Or more to the point, who they haven’t.
Kicking the Crows for trading away Charlie Cameron, Mitch McGovern, Jake Lever, Hugh Greenwood and Alex Keath has almost become a national sport but that detracts from the other big question - who have they traded in?
The Crows are rebuilding with draft picks which makes sense but they might have avoided bottoming out to the extent they lost to Gold Coast by 53 points with a different strategy.
Coach Matthew Nicks and Adelaide are in this for the long haul and maybe it’s time the list management team rips up its playbook at the end of this season.
Be aggressive, be bold, spend and improve the list at the same rate the draft picks are refreshing it.
Port Adelaide has done it with Rozee, Butters, Duursma, and three picks inside the top 23 last year, while splashing some cash to prize premiership ruckman Scott Lycett away from West Coast, All-Australian midfielder Tom Rockliff from Brisbane and Steven Motlop from Geelong.
And that was after they spent up big on Charlie Dixon from the Gold Coast who looks like he could do anything this season.
Adelaide has done nothing at the trade table for the best part of five years.
The last player of note they brought in was Eddie Betts from Carlton in 2013 which was a massive success but he’s long gone now, and Bryce Gibbs arrived full of hope in 2018 but now can’t get a game.
Look at Hawthorn’s current list and the way they went after Tom Mitchell, Jaeger O’Meara and Chad Wingard. Or Patrick Dangerfield, Gary Rohan and Luke Dahlhaus at Geelong, Lachie Neale and Charlie Cameron at Brisbane, Tom Lynch and Dion Prestia at Richmond and Adam Treloar and Taylor Adams at Collingwood.
The Crows were supposedly in the market for Collingwood ruckman Brodie Grundy before he signed a seven-year deal to stay at Collingwood.
Maybe the big moves at Adelaide are coming. In the same interview in which he declared the team was rebuilding on Fox Footy this month, football director Mark Ricciuto also said they would need to pick off free agents from rival clubs so they could climb the mountain again.
Perhaps they need to cast an even wider net and target players under contract as well.
WE NEED TO TALK
Matthew Nicks looked shattered at his press conference on Sunday night and gave every indication the team was in for a long meeting back at the hotel on the Gold Coast.
“We’ll open it up, hopefully I don’t do too much of the talking, and we’ll find out where we’re really at, hopefully I see some vulnerability there and we get to the bottom of it pretty quickly,” he said.
“Because we’ll turn it around but at this point in time, it’s just not acceptable what’s being put out on the field.
“We’re in a world of hurt, nowhere near the level, our intensity’s not there, so we’ve got some conversations coming up around why that is.
“We will work through this, we’ll get our heads together and talk about why, have a conversation around game plan and contest and intensity, around everything, effort - we’ll go there.”
Captain Rory Sloane told The Advertiser the group was feeling “pretty flat”.
“We came up here ready to respond from last week and clearly we didn’t so the boys are pretty flat - and frustrated too, as I’m sure our supporters and fan base would be as well,” he said.
Sloane has been at Adelaide for 202 games and seen the highs and lows which led to the next question: Can you remember a time at the footy club when it’s been this hard (on the field)?
“Things are never as good as they seem or as bad as they seem, we’ve been through a lot of challenging times as a footy club and I’m positive we can respond to this,” he said.
“We’ve had a lot of debutants the last couple of weeks and there are positives to come out of getting games into guys, we’ve just got to keep training the right things to improve and I’m sure we can turn it around.
“We’ll stick together, we’ve got to own the last two weeks, we started the year in some good contests in the pre-season games and Round 1 against Sydney but the last two weeks have clearly been below the standard that we set ourselves.”
MIDFIELD MAKEOVER
If Adelaide is rebuilding its midfield with draft picks, Chayce Jones and Ned McHenry are a good start but they need help and it’s becoming increasingly clear it needs to come from elsewhere.
Before Sunday’s game, David King posed a hypothetical question to Cameron Mooney on Fox Footy - if you were playing for the premiership today, which midfield would you want? Not picking a team for the next 10 years, but for today?
“I’m backing in experience, I’m going with the Crouch brothers because you know they’ll give you 25 possessions each,” Mooney said.
For the record Matt and Brad Crouch each had 22 but were out-gunned by the Suns.
In the first quarter alone the Crows were -11 in clearances and -20 in contested possession.
“I can’t give you an answer on that at this point, until I have a chat to the players and we’ll get to the bottom of it,” Nicks said.
“Contested ball ... however you want to look at that, and I’m sick of talking about it to be honest, but we’re going to have to face up to reality.
“We’ve got some things to answer, as a midfield we’ve got work to do. There are too many areas at the moment for me to be angry with one and not the other ... They had 18 intercept marks.”
King didn’t hold back during the call.
“Who is Brad Crouch? What is Brad Crouch? I want to find out who they actually are?” Are they taking the club forward?”
Crouch’s camp reportedly approached Gold Coast about a long-term deal last year and he is out of contract with the Crows this season after winning their best-and-fairest in 2019.
Adelaide will have an interesting call to make this year. Spend up and keep him or put the cash somewhere else.
Crows supporters got a glimpse of what the future of their midfield will look like in the last quarter on Sunday and neither Crouch brother was there, and nor was Sloane who turned 30 in March and remains the heart-and-soul of the team but not their long-term future.
McHenry, Jones and Ben Keays all started on the ball at the first centre bounce of the last quarter, and Nicks said Keays went to Matt Rowell and kept him to two possessions.
“There’s some light there ... it’s not extinguished but we’re in a world of hurt,” he said.
Where is that outside run the Crows were supposedly getting around the footy this season?Granted that Wayne Milera is injured and Rory Atkins started in the middle before hurting his shoulder on Sunday, but Brodie Smith has been moved back into defence.
“Some of our young kids are playing some great footy at the moment, and a few of our senior players myself included have to make sure we stand up and help carry the load and help these guys out,” Sloane said.
“We had a really young midfield towards the end of that game and I was impressed with how they went about it, Ned McHenry, Chayce Jones, Ben Keays, these boys really had a dip.”
The other positives on a dark day for the Crows was the performance of Tom Doedee in his second game back from a knee reconstruction.
“He is looking sharp, fit and jumping at the ball, it’s really nice to have Tommy back,” Sloane said.
And debutant Will Hamill should get another crack.
“It wasn’t a great game for him to come in, we certainly didn’t help him out as a whole group, we want to make these debutants really enjoy their AFL experience so definitely some work to do,” the skipper said.
reece.homfray@news.com.au