Could demoted Crow Bryce Gibbs face his old team in SANFL finals?
The Gibbs family name is etched in Glenelg Football Club history and Tigers’ stalwarts are already fearful Bryce could make a finals impact for the Crows in any major round face-off with the Bays.
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On the southern hill at Glenelg Oval they gather as “Snout’s Louts” to recall the last Tigers to earn SANFL league premiership honours for the Glenelg Football Club in 1986.
But today they are most confused by how Bryce Gibbs cannot command a place — any spot — in the Adelaide Football Club’s AFL team. They are not alone in this space. But these old boys know there can be a sting on their new Tigers’ tail with Bryce Gibbs, the son of Ross — a key member of the back-to-back SANFL flags in 1985-86.
As the beers flowed during a recent SANFL match, one of the old guard — hardened by the 33-year premiership drought at the Bay — taunted the “football gods” by noting: “Our luck, we will play the Crows in the grand final this year — and Bryce will kick the winning goal … after the siren.”
It would be yet another bittersweet moment in Gibbs’ story that has had its testing moments from the early 2000s when the AFL delivered the first father-son rules that first aligned Gibbs to Port Adelaide — and then put him out of reach of the Crows because Ross had not played 200 of his 253 SANFL league games at Glenelg in the appropriate qualifying period.
Gibbs is again a saga — as he was in 2006 when he became the No. 1 draftee to Carlton rather than a first-up father-son pick for Adelaide; as he was in October 2016 when the Crows could not close a trade deal with the Blues; and as he was in October 2017 when Adelaide paid two first-round draft picks to inherit Gibbs and his contract from Carlton.
And now the storyline turns to Gibbs’ fall from being a first-choice Crow, after ranking fourth in the Malcolm Blight Medal count for the Adelaide club champion last season.
How did this happen?
Clearly, Adelaide coach Don Pyke has lost his belief in the 30-year-old Gibbs as 25-year-old Brad Crouch has reclaimed his place in the Crows midfield after beating his injury curse; as 26-year-old Cam Ellis-Yolmen has begun to fulfil his promise as a strong-bodied midfielder; and as 27-year-old Hugh Greenwood has offered greater versatility and flexibility from the centre square to the goalsquare.
As Pyke declared there were “a couple of things” Gibbs needed to work on in his game, a senior football analyst at The Age newspaper in Melbourne declared this agenda was about “a lack of body-on-body contact at stoppages and poor defensive running”.
Days later, Gibbs was handed — in the second half against Melbourne at Darwin — the challenge of countering All-Australian midfielder Clayton Oliver. Gibbs’ work was significant in securing Adelaide’s come-from-behind win … and he was dropped the next week (a routine that has played out four times this season).
More confusion for “Snouts’ Louts” … and all those Crows fans who cannot understand how a player who is still to consume at least $1.1 million of salary cap space next year and in Season 2021 (assuming Gibbs stays at Adelaide to complete his contract).
Gibbs’ running became an issue at West Lakes as the sports scientists looked at his GPS readings. If only Essendon mastermind Kevin Sheedy had been in the match committee room to remind the Crows coaches that Australian football has put many slow players on pedestals … such as Brownlow Medallist Greg Williams.
Adelaide chief executive Andrew Fagan told Crows list manager Justin Reid during the 2017 AFL trade period that he was not to leave his dinner with Carlton counterpart Stephen Silvagni until he had a deal done for Gibbs. If Adelaide was prepared to pay two first-round draft picks for Gibbs, they must have recognised a talented footballer rather than an Olympic sprint runner.
If there is no room for Gibbs in the Adelaide midfield — that does indeed need more speed — there surely is another role for the 259-game veteran. Half-back? Half-forward, particularly when the Crows have suffered without the precise delivery of Tom Lynch?
Certainly former Carlton team-mate Zach Tuohy thinks this way, telling Channel Seven’s Game Day at the weekend: “It’s hard for me to believe that a player as silky and classy as him (Gibbs) can’t find a spot.
“I’d imagine even on a wing. He would be devastating once it gets out to him. He is as good a kick and decision maker as I’ve played with.”
Snout’s Louts certainly would agree.
Pyke’s latest bulletin on Gibbs declared the big trade gain the Crows made at the end of 2017 is down on confidence. Here it is best to listen to Collingwood and Brisbane premiership coach Leigh Matthews’ reaction, also on Game Day: “You can’t possibly get the best out of a player when he is in and out like a yo-yo.
“He has to be that stressed about his form and how he is going … talk about pushing someone into the ground further. I’m not sure what they have done is going to get him back to anywhere near his best.”
Gibbs might still become a premiership player at Adelaide … in the SANFL, if only to fulfil that dark prophecy Snout’s Louts have on the southern mound at Glenelg Oval.
REALITY BITES
Television networks across Europe and the US are noting the power of women’s sport — once ignored by broadcasters — from grand ratings during the recent World Cup in France.
In Britain, the English women’s team drew a peak audience of 11.7 million as the Lionesses lost their semi-final to the US, to be the most-watched television broadcast in the UK this year.
In the US, the World Cup final at the weekend — in which Team USA beat The Netherlands for its fourth world championship title — drew 14 million viewers to be one of the highest-rating soccer broadcasts ever shown in America.
These figures enhance the campaign from international women soccer players to have their pay scales lifted — at least to parity with their male counterparts.
US captain Megan Rapinoe worked this agenda in her media conference after the World Cup final saying: “We put on … the most incredible show that you could ever ask for. We can’t do anything more to impress more, to be better ambassadors, to take on more, to play better, to do anything.
“It’s time to move that conversation forward to the next step.”
And there is that other issue of the differing prizemoney on offer at the men’s and women’s World Cups.
BOARD MOVE
Port Adelaide Football Club is poised to put a China expert on its board as a vacancy emerges soon.
JIMMY’S HONOUR
Following Jim Deane’s long-awaited induction to the Australian Football Hall of Fame, the Ovens and Murray Football League have bestowed their Hall of Fame honour on the South Australian and South Adelaide legend.
Deane was captain-coach at Myrtleford in the late 1950s and 1960s, after he closed his grand career at the Panthers.
DIARY NOTE
West Adelaide Football Club will be dusting down its history — and putting it on display — at Richmond Oval on Sunday from 11am to 3pm. There are some seriously devoted Bloods men and women maintaining the club’s memorabilia — a note that would have pleased the late Mark Beswick, one of the outstanding historians in SA football’s story.