Graham Cornes column: Crows’ woes about injury, not division

ADELAIDE’S season may be spluttering and it may take a minor miracle to revive it. But Graham Cornes writes that there is one simple reason for the Crows disappointing slide and all the other nonsense about them has to stop.

Luke Brown hobbles off Optus Stadium after the Crows’ loss to Fremantle, joining an already long casualty list. Picture: Paul Kane/Getty Images

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THIS nonsense has to stop! The Crows’ season may be spluttering and it may take a minor miracle to revive it: only the eternal optimist that is a coach who sees the mathematical possibility that his team can still make the eight believes it will happen.

However the rubbish that is being written and spoken about the Crows has to be given its true perspective. In most cases it is dross conjured up by misinformed observers who seek only a headline. Half-truth and rumours are portrayed as fact. Molehills are turned into mountains. Agendas and prejudices are driven home when the club is at its most vulnerable.

The simple reason for the Crows disappointing slide is its insurmountable injury list.

It has nothing to do with the “Collective Minds” pre-season camp or that Mitch McGovern thought he should have got a bigger contract. It certainly has nothing to do with the fact that Bryce Gibbs, who incidentally took a pay-cut to return to Adelaide, is getting paid more than McGovern because simply, he is not.

In most of the Crows losses, they have been competitive and desperate. In two of those losses, they have been downright unlucky. In a couple of the wins, they have been superb. The other four wins have been a triumph of coaching and the impetuosity of youth as young players who at the start of the season only previously dreamt of playing an AFL game, actually found themselves in the tri-colour guernsey. In only the one game – the disaster when the dam-wall broke in Alice Springs - have they been woeful. Even that disappointment can be explained by form of Melbourne, an emerging young team which is finally starting to fulfil its potential.

Instead of damning the pre-season camp, the critics should credit its influence on the resilience that the Crows have displayed in the face of such overwhelming adversity.

Professional sporting clubs have long sought a psychological advantage over their competitors. We’ve all heard the old mantra: “the mind is a powerful weapon.” How to unlock that power is a never-ending quest for those on the journey of self-discovery and improvement. Often that journey involves taking the athletes out of their comfort zones - if only to prove to themselves what they are capable of when fully tested. That’s why they are sent on missions of extreme physical endurance. No-one questions Alastair Clarkson’s methods when he sends his players on the emotional and physical ordeal that is the Kokoda Trail.

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No one reports that people regularly die on that tortuous trek. No one questions the coach who makes a team repeat an arduous exercise because one or two of them took a short-cut.

Malcolm’s Blight’s brutal psychological treatment of David Pittman, Matt Connell and Troy Bond is now seen as genius - the end justifying the means. And in any mind-training exercise (or indeed any different form of training) there will be some who simply don’t like it or are uncomfortable with it.

It is true that a couple of the Crows players were uncomfortable with elements of the Collective Minds program. But the modern footballer can be a psychologically sensitive soul. Additionally, his wife or partner enters into the equation more so than at any time in sporting history. Yes, there was anxiety and angst among some players and their wives but nothing like the umbrage that has been reported.

To critically compare Adelaide’s Collective Mind program with Richmond’s feel-good Triple H exercise where players stood in front of their team-mates and recited stories of “Hardship, Highlights, and Heroes”, is misleading and mischievous.

After 12 rounds of a most difficult season for the Adelaide Football Club some perspective is required. Take nine of the best players out of any team and it will struggle. And that has nothing at all to do whether a player’s wife thought a facilitator of a mind-training exercise should have been more respectful to him.