Number Crunch: Continuity a key to success, says Adelaide Crows coach Don Pyke

SOUTH Australia’s high-flying AFL clubs have used the fewest players in the league this season, writes Andrew Capel.

POWERING ON: Robbie Gray is one of 11 Port Adelaide players to have played every game this season. Picture: Julian Smith (AAP).

GOOD management, good luck, good form or a combination of all three?

Whatever way you look at it, keeping your best players on the park has been a key to on-field success in the AFL.

And in an era of equalisation where salary caps, drafts and caps on football department spending have produced the most even competition ever – there has been a record number of close results and upsets this year – it has never appeared to be more important.

The upstart Western Bulldogs bucked the trend last year by coming from seventh at the end of the minor round to win an unlikely premiership after using 39 players during the season. But in the previous 10 years the premiers used an average of just 33 players a year.

Remarkably, for the third consecutive season Adelaide has used the fewest players in the competition. In this three-year period it has won the third-most home-and-away matches (39) behind Sydney and West Coast (40).

The Crows have after 15 rounds this year played only 28 men, one less than Port Adelaide, which sits second in the players-used table.

It’s no surprise then that the SA teams are flying high in second and fifth positions respectively.

Last year Adelaide used a league-low 29 players. The year before it used 32, also the fewest in the competition.

When the difference between winning and losing is so marginal – 32 matches have been decided by two goals or fewer this season – the health of teams is critical.

Injury-hit flag favourite GWS and a Patrick Dangerfield-inspired Geelong have managed to defy the odds by sitting in the top three despite playing 34 and 36 players respectively.

Ten Crows have played every game this year – equal second-most in the competition behind the Power, which has had 11 men front every week.

“We have again been fortunate in terms of the numbers we have used,’’ Adelaide coach Don Pyke said.

Safety in numbers ... how Adelaide and Port Adelaide have used the fewest players this year

“We've been able to get some good continuity into guys, which is a credit to them in the way they recover and a credit to our high performance staff and the way they are managing our players and the way we train them.’’

Pyke said keeping so many of his main men on the field had been critical to the club’s home-and-away success.

“When you don’t have to chop and change all the time it becomes a real strength because time on the ground with the same guys, whether it’s a back six, forward six or a midfield group, they learn through the experience of playing together,’’ he said.

While the Crows' continuity is an advantage and has come despite the off-season change of fitness coach from Brett Burton, now the club’s head of football, to Matt Hass, dual premiership captain Mark Bickley has suggested they should rest some players late in the season if the opportunity presents itself.

After using so few players last year, the Crows dropped their final home-and-away season match at home against West Coast when key midfield playmaker Rory Sloane was suspended and influential half-back Brodie Smith was injured.

They also might have carried some sore players into the finals, where they were bumped out in the second week by Sydney.

Bickley said late-season injuries to a team that has used a small amount of players could result in it dangerously calling on men with no or little AFL form.

“That is the balancing act,’’ Pyke said.

“We want to make sure that we are able to maintain the right personnel on the ground to continue to get results and build that continuity but we will look at how guys are travelling because we don’t want to push ourselves to the limit and get to late in the year and have some sore boys.’’