Adelaide should note independent reviews of AFL football programs have proven to be vital in building success
CROWS coach Don Pyke should not fear all of his football program at Adelaide being put under the microscope after a season of disappointment at West Lakes.
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REVIEW. It is the most scorned word in the AFL today.
Score review - considered a failure as goal umpires, as with their cricket colleagues, have conceded their judgment to inferior technology.
Match review officer - no-one wants to be named by the AFL’s new lone sheriff, Michael Christian. He is now the target of players taking exception to his eagerness to fine rather than suspend them. More and more the lunatics are taking over the asylum.
And then there is the much-feared “review” of a football program at an AFL club.
Mark Thompson never coped with the review that redefined the Geelong football program - and reviews at AFL clubs - and built a dynasty at Kardinia Park.
Damien Hardwick should be forever grateful that Richmond chief executive Brendon Gale made his review of the Tigers an “all of club” affair - and demanded constant audits to ensure the club lived to the review findings.
The result is Richmond is meeting its grand ambition of being a premiership club with the game’s largest supporter base.
Greater Western Sydney, after being heavily criticised for its injury count, set up a mid-season review of its fitness program. The Giants recalled its former fitness guru John Quinn to, as coach Leon Cameron put it, “put a fresh set of eyes over our program to look at why are we sustaining some of these injuries’.”
Adelaide has much to review from a season - and a pre-season - that has delivered results well below expectations from a team (and perhaps club) that intended to go one better as the AFL pacesetter this season.
The fitness program certainly needs to be assessed to understand where bad management overtook bad luck in delivering so many soft-tissue injuries, in particular hamstring strains.
Who gets this assignment at West Lakes? An internal appointment leaves self-interest to take priority - and leave the Crows in no better position to overcome the millstone that wrecked its on-field campaign.
It would be prudent - particularly when Adelaide put the growth of its youth on the agenda at the end of the 2016 trade period - for the Crows to review the value of its reserves program in the SANFL. How can there be prime development in this team when it is topped up by community league players?
And will there be a review of the Crows coaching staff - and the needs of senior coach Don Pyke?
Much has been made of Pyke’s match-day coaching since he stood firm in belief of his players “to dig themselves out of a hole” during last year’s AFL grand final with Richmond. The observation from Crows premiership coach Malcolm Blight this week that Pyke needs to be “more adventurous” prompts the question of whether the Adelaide coaching box would be best served with a wise head charged solely with widening Pyke’s view while his assistant coaches are so locked into the narrow frame of their on-field divisions.
The long-touted prospect of Pyke’s West Coast premiership team-mate Peter Sumich filling this role becomes relevant.
But how does such a review unfold at West Lakes?
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