Crows’ search for a ground-breaking answer to the mental side of sport has left unwanted scars
CROWS coach Don Pyke and his football boss Brett Burton had hoped to find the key to unlocking the power of an athlete’s mind with a pre-season camp on the Gold Coast. They opened a can of worms.
Michelangelo Rucci
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ONE day there will be a tell-all book. Until then, those looking in at the Adelaide Football Club - and the inner sanctum of Don Pyke’s team - can only rely on what club chairman Rob Chapman calls “noise” from second or third-hand sources.
The stories from Adelaide’s contentious pre-season camp on the Gold Coast in February - dubbed in that “noise” as cult-like - would indeed make for a book that very few would be able to put down, even those without an intense interest in sport or Australian football.
Indigenous star Eddie Betts clearly did not take to being challenged on why he reacts - as he should - so strongly to race issues, such as the abhorrent moment a banana was thrown at his feet at the end of Showdown 41 at Adelaide Oval in 2016.
Nor did a few of his non-indigenous team-mates when they were prodded on issues that supposedly make them mentally weak - and vulnerable to on-field failure, as was noted with under-par performances at the MCG in last year’s grand final loss to Richmond.
Clearly, Crows players did not lose their talents on the flight to Melbourne for that ill-fated grand final. But they failed in that area that has tormented coaches for decades - what happens above the shoulders.
Instead of being mentally stronger, this Crows team seems confused - and it shows with the disjointed football it is playing today. Instead of unlocking the secrets to the mind - working out what does indeed happen “above the shoulders” - the Crows have opened a can of worms.
There is always that risk while searching for a ground-breaking edge in sport.
Two AFL clubs had intriguing pre-seasons. Adelaide pushed the boundaries on the Gold Coast. Melbourne’s players pushed back on their club by refusing to repeat the commando camp from the previous summer. And, by extension, supposedly undermined coach Simon Goodwin by usurping his football department’s control in a moment that could have been described as the “lunatics taking over the asylum”.
Rather than test their minds, the lampooned Melbourne players sought to strengthen their personal bonds with each other - just as Richmond did a year earlier with their “three-Hs” program in which the players detail their heroes, highlights and hardship.
At Melbourne, Jack Viney noted the power of building unity from good ol’ fashioned chats: “We see relationships as a massive part of performing and building a culture.
“It’s on both parties, it is the person you want to find out about as they open up and it’s about the person who receives it and how they take it in the right manner. It’s telling our stories, our deepest darkest secrets, these kind of things.”
At Adelaide, as the story goes, some players know less of their team-mates today ... and the Crows have not found the secret mental switch to make athletes perform to their physical best.
And one day there will be more than “noise” about an intriguing few days on the Gold Coast.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
WE’VE all heard in the past two weeks that players are looking to get out of Adelaide, but to put Mitch McGovern in that group is ridiculous.
- McGOVERN’S Perth-based manager Colin Young on the reports of the contracted Crows forward wanting to break his new three-year contract.
REALITY BITES
ARCHITECT David Johnston was right. He could have easily put a bulldozer over a patch of dirt on the northern bank of the River Torrens - taking down the old scoreboard and Moreton Bay figs along the way - to build a concrete bowl as the “new” Adelaide Oval. This is what Western Australia has with the new Perth Stadium by the Swan River.
But Johnston’s vision to retain the Oval’s character by building three pavilions - and at one-third of the cost of the Perth Stadium - wins out when the Oval and the Perth arena are compared side-by-side.
Perth Stadium does have considerable strengths, in particular the facilities that include recliner seats in the top-notch grandstand section between the two coaches’ boxes. But Adelaide Oval has a character and atmosphere that is exceptional while the Perth Stadium replicates the concrete bowls that stand as sports venues in many places across the world.
And the Oval wins for location, location, location with that easy walk from the city centre - a point that was always to make Adelaide Oval win favour ahead of any memory of Football Park at West Lakes.
GONE BUT ...
REMARKABLY, not everyone in WA is in love with the new Perth Stadium that cost $1.6 billion to deliver greater capacity and greater comfort to Eagles and Dockers fans.
A poll by the West Australian newspaper, with 10,100 respondents, had 5.43 per cent saying they would have preferred to stay at Subiaco Oval. There was a 73.16 per cent vote for Perth Stadium - and 21.42 per cent answering they “cannot say”.
THINK AGAIN
AS the AFL considers loading up Adelaide Oval with Thursday Night Football next season, the fans have sent a strong message back to AFL House. The 26,137 at the Oval on Thursday night - for the Port Adelaide-Western Bulldogs match - was the lowest AFL crowd at the venue, including even the pre-development match between the Power and Melbourne in 2011.
Thursday Night Football is not for the darkness of winter when the weather forecast is loaded with heavy rain and strong winds. Clearly, it helps draw television ratings - but not a crowd when there is a work commitments and school the next day and country fans find it difficult to attend the Oval.
The AFL needs to think again on this part of the fixture equation.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
IF Adelaide finally wins the chance to host the Commonwealth Games - the latest bid being for the 2026 sporting festival - with Adelaide Oval as the major stadium, what happens to the Crows and Power in that AFL season?
Remembering the Gold Coast Suns did not have access to their home venue, Metricon Stadium, for the first 10 weeks of the AFL premiership season sends a major concern for the two SA-based AFL clubs on how the Commonwealth Games would play on their schedules in the 2026 season.
At least Port Adelaide has Jiangwan Stadium in Shanghai, China.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
WHICH new AFL rule - rather than a mercy rule - would have saved the “look of the game” in the GWS-Gold Coast or St Kilda-Sydney matches last Saturday?
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au
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