True test for Adelaide Crows is how they deliver external review findings
Adelaide’s review of its football program is to deliver one of the most-important documents in the Crows’ 29-year story. And it is important the authors of this paper are seen as anything but “insular” or in a “boy’s club”.
Michelangelo Rucci
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Even in doing the right thing, the Adelaide Football Club is cast as being wrong. And wrongly so.
It is a sign of the pain the Crows carry for failing to meet lofty expectations on the field. And here lies the big challenge in winning back faith and trust from some of the “disenfranchised” Crows supporters and many in the grander AFL community. The Crows must do the right thing off the park.
Adelaide’s “external” review of the Crows football department should - by the presence of four experts, including Hawthorn great Jason Dunstall and former Fremantle captain Matthew Pavlich - remove the image of an insular club, a “boy’s club”.
But there has been heavy criticism of the Crows instead.
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Crows premiership coach Malcolm Blight, Sydney premiership master Paul Roos and leading AFL commentator Gerard Whateley have condemned the need for external eyes on the Adelaide football department. They argue there should be enough expertise at West Lakes to work through the challenges of unravelling where the Crows have gone wrong.
“It is the role of the chairman and the chief executive to run a football club,” Whateley told SEN1629. “I firmly believe (Crows chief executive officer) Andrew Fagan should have been entrusted with this task (of reviewing the football department) in the same way (chief executive) Brian Cook was at Geelong, (board member) Peter Murphy at Collingwood and (chief executive) Brendon Gale at Richmond.”
Now that would be insular. This would be “navel gazing” of the highest order and carry the greatest risk of no-one at the Adelaide Football Club being held to account for the past two seasons of off-field failings as the Crows have fallen from 2017 minor premier, grand finalist and competition pacesetter to rank 12th and 11th in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
If a fully internal review concluded - as Crows chairman Rob Chapman declared in pre-review media interviews - that the Adelaide Football Club has the “right people in the right roles” what would have been the reaction? Many would have said, “Of course they would ... the boys are looking after each other.”
The critics would have immediately argued the review needed external eyes - just as the Crows have done by having Dunstall oversee their audit at West Lakes.
Also, Fagan - who notes he has 25 years in top-line sport - is relatively new to Australian football after working for the bulk of his adminstrative career in rugby. Had the review been left to Fagan - replicating the work of the more-experienced and football-wise Cook at Geelong and Gale at Richmond - his findings would have been struck with an asterisk. Even in the Crows faithful there are those who note Fagan - after five years at West Lakes - is very strong in making a big buck for his club, but question his understanding of how an AFL team operates.
Football director Mark Ricciuto? Had the Brownlow Medallist led this critical review, the questions on his long associations with Crows football chief Brett Burton and list manager Justin Reid would have clouded the review findings.
Whateley’s theme of leaving the review to “people with intimate knowledge in the organisation, (people) who are employed in positions of decision making and authority” would not have worked for the Adelaide Football Club. Too many critics and even many Crows fans would have tagged Adelaide as being “insular”.
And there is a big test of Adelaide at the end of the review. The Crows hierarchy must ensure ensure there is faith in the findings presented in the board room, particularly if - as Chapman pre-empted - there is confirmation that Burton is in the right seat in the football department, along with contracted coach Don Pyke.
Adelaide promised to tell all at the end of the Kurt Tippett saga in 2012 - and did not, arguing legal reasons demanded confidentiality. Ultimately, club chief executive Steven Trigg took the bullet for the team and the real story behind the AFL sanctions on the Crows remains untold.
Adelaide, in particularly Burton, completely botched up the Collective Mind press conference at West Lakes last year. To leave more questions at the end of that public session was a disaster that cannot be repeated with this football department review. The spin must end from the spun-out Crows.
So far, Adelaide has presented the start of its critical review in the right way. By adding external expertise to what is effectively an internal review should dismiss the notion that the Crows are “insular”.
But the real test is still to come at the end. It is about how the Crows present the outcomes. They owe this to their members, their fans - and those external experts, in particular Dunstall, who have put their reputations on the line in this review.