Adelaide and Port Adelaide still in the news despite not making the AFL finals
For the first time since 2011, South Australia is without a football team in the AFL finals but that has not stopped either club grabbing their fair share of the headlines in the past week.
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Edition 1 looked at the top-10 movers in SA football with Port Adelaide premiership midfielder and media personality Kane Cornes at No. 1 for making the biggest moves this season.
This week’s newsletter looks at the “shakers” - those who have trembled and tumbled from their positions of strength and achievement to have Season 2019 turn out to be anything but memorable for the right reasons.
Enjoy this week’s review of our menu from the sporting scene locally, interstate and around the globe.
OFF THE BIG STAGE, BUT ...
NEITHER Adelaide nor Port Adelaide will be part of the top-eight AFL final series that starts on Thursday night with the Richmond-Hawthorn qualifying final at the MCG.
For the first time since 2011, SA is without one of its AFL teams on the big stage.
But both the Crows and Power are not out of the Australian football news cycle.
So much remains up for discussion from the Crows’ pre-season camp at the Gold Coast, more so after that bizarre media conference by Collective Mind at the MCG last week and more disclosures from the growing leaks within the Adelaide Football Club.
Crows coach Don Pyke’s remarks at the Malcolm Blight club champion night that “humans make mistakes” is most relevant. Finally, there is an admission from within the Adelaide football division that the Gold Coast camp went too far. But who is to be held accountable for this big mistake, particularly after the revelations that the Crows players are far from satisfied with how Adelaide has tried to close this saga with apologies inside the clubhouse?
At Port Adelaide, there is again more movement leading up to October’s trade and free-agency period.
But many Power supporters are questioning how can Port Adelaide hand a five-year contract to free-agent West Coast ruckman Scott Lycett but not hand more than three seasons to out-of-contract wingman Jared Polec who clearly wants to stay at Alberton but cannot ignore the “godfather” $3.5 million, five-year deal on offer at North Melbourne?
It is a good question.
WHAT’S COOKING
HAWTHORN president Jeff Kennett entered the meeting of his club colleagues in Melbourne at the start of the year to cop a barrage. His fellow AFL club presidents fired back at Kennett for his hits on rival clubs, in particular St Kilda for declaring the Saints were insolvent.
So one club chief executive will think the meeting rooms at AFL House are echo chambers when he is savaged in the same way for his cheap shots at rival clubs. His recent remarks - while trying to get his own team’s fans to write the club into their wills - about “internal issues” at a rival club and how they are never reported in the local newspaper is one of a long list of cheap shots that are to come back with interest.
HOP TIP
WHICH AFL club chief executive has tried to put his resume before Cricket Australia to be considered as the replacement for James Sutherland?