Adelaide is still nursing the scars of losing the 2017 grand final and its mind-coaching clearly has not helped
ADELAIDE’S 2018 season has proved the club has not found a way to heal the scars of losing the 2017 grand final, with the physical effects of a delayed start compounding the mental battle of players, writes dual Crows premiership skipper Mark Bickley.
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NAT Fyfe looks indestructible: In stature and also his mentality.
Captain of the Fremantle Football Club, so often the fortunes of that team seem to rest upon his shoulders.
So it was interesting to read last week that after losing the 2013 grand final that he felt his mind started to wander as he watched the medal presentation to the Hawks’ players.
“Will it be a decade? How many players am I going to play with before I step back out on the MCG on grand final day?”
At that moment you feel further away than ever from success, and question what you have to do just to get back there again, if ever.
That is why grand final day is such a polarising experience for players. The potential for it to be the best day of your sporting life, or the worst, depending on the result.
Having not experienced it in person it made me ponder the turmoil of losing a grand final.
What it does to you? Particularly if you or your team plays poorly.
Port Adelaide, after the disastrous grand final loss in 2007, lost the first four games of 2008 and struggled all year, eventually limping to seven wins and finishing 13th.
Kane Cornes revealed that he thought it took years rather than months for the team to fully overcome the impact of the 2007 grand final performance. The embarrassment, the self-doubt it created. Opposition players and supporters taunting them constantly with the record margin. It would be five years and a new coach before Port Adelaide would contest finals again.
A quick look back over recent years shows a number of teams have suffered a slide down the ladder after making it to the big dance.
West Coast slid to seventh spot in 2016 after being thrashed by Hawthorn in 2015, and even the seemingly bulletproof Sydney Swans lost their first six games of the season last year after starting favourites and losing against the Bulldogs in 2016.
There are a number of points that can be made from looking a little closer at the recent history of the losing grand finalists.
The first is that only three times in the last 18 years have the losing grand finalist been able to make it back the next year and triumph. West Coast rebounded in 2006 and Geelong bounced back in 2009 and the great Hawthorn side, who after losing to Sydney in 2012 went on to win the next three.
The second is that there is a price to pay for making the grand final. Players carry injuries in the pursuit of success and that often means a number of players need surgery after the grand final. Not a huge problem, but with the shortened pre-season most players, even if the surgeries were minor, would be limited in their training until the New Year.
The third, and maybe the hardest to get your head around is the stuff Cornes talked about: The impact mentally on the individual players, particularly when it goes terribly wrong.
So for Adelaide going into the 2018 season, history was telling it that the odds were against the Crows rising from defeat in September 2017 to win the flag this year.
So I can understand why the club felt the need to choose a bold path. Looking to improve some of the frailties shown mentally on grand final day, while also maintaining the demanding physical training standards the Crows have been known for, even with a reduced time frame of their pre-season.
Unfortunately, both appear to have failed. Physically, the Crows injuries list has been the obvious drag on their season.
Bad luck or bad management? Hard to know without having all the details, but most clubs pride themselves on the prevention of soft tissue injuries.
The Crows record in this area has seen significant increases (particularly hamstrings) in the past two seasons. It’s a fine line the high performance staff walk, between pushing the players to the edge, and going too far and falling off.
Mentally, the lack of spirit and fight shown over the last month looks like in the players’ minds, that this has all become too hard,
I know very little detail of the mental program Adelaide embarked on, and I suspect not many outside the club do. So forgetting the methods, the only real measurement is the outcome.
Are the Crows better equipped mentally to handle pressure situations on the field? Are they a more connected group with resilience and spirit? Most importantly, have the actions driven improved performance in 2018?
The answer is clearly no.
The Adelaide Football Club was quite rightly exploring the limits both physically and mentally of its players in the build-up to the new season. The Crows have long identified the mind as the new frontier of high performance. I wonder if when this challenging path for the Adelaide players was set out, if the decision-makers truly contemplated the possibility of a considerable downside?
Originally published as Adelaide is still nursing the scars of losing the 2017 grand final and its mind-coaching clearly has not helped
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