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Reece Homfray: Review presents Mark Ricciuto and board a real chance to ‘fix up’ Adelaide Crows

Mark Ricciuto’s weekend comments reflected the frustration Crows supporters are feeling and also the strain Adelaide is under as it finally accepts the grim reality that it must hit re-set on its entire football program.

Roo apologises for fan comments

Adelaide has weathered some big storms in the past five years, some of its own doing and some not, but this one is not going to simply blow over after Mark Ricciuto’s weekend comments struck the heart of a club’s most precious commodity — its members.

Crows fans have put up with a lot of unease at West Lakes since the 2017 grand final which is the reference point to which everything that has happened in the past two years is marked against.

In Ballarat on the weekend, two years after their team played in a grand final, supporters watched them surrender a 0-40 lead and never recover against a team that was also playing for its season.

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Co-captain Taylor Walker and his Crows team mates look dejected after the loss in Ballarat on Sunday. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
Co-captain Taylor Walker and his Crows team mates look dejected after the loss in Ballarat on Sunday. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

The final siren marked the end of a torrid season but the beginning of a new one altogether — open season. A no-holds-barred look at West Lakes from the inside out to find out what’s wrong, why it’s wrong and who’s responsible.

Ricciuto’s weekend comments reflected the frustration Adelaide supporters are feeling and also the strain his football club is under as it finally accepts the grim reality that it must hit re-set on its entire football program.

But in uttering his very poor choice of words when suggesting if Crows fans don’t support those in charge at the club then “maybe they don’t need to barrack for the footy club anymore”, Ricciuto put them even more off-side.

Adelaide supporters and members in particular have remained pretty loyal in the face of two disappointing years and a poor track record of player retention before that.

They watched a pre-season mind-training camp become a sideshow distraction and a wretched run of soft-tissue injuries derail their 2018 season.

Then when all was meant to return to normal in 2019 they watched the club back in virtually the same list that took it to the 2017 grand final and with minimal injuries, finish 11th.

Yet they have continued to turn up and support the team. Crowds never dipped below 41,000 at Adelaide Oval this season, not even against GWS or West Coast, and 48,175 sat through the 66-point mauling from Collingwood in Round 22 when their season was more or less over already.

But there comes a point in any relationship when enough is enough and when Adelaide’s members reached that crossroad on Sunday night, the last thing they needed to hear was to take their concerns somewhere else.

Ricciuto’s comments were bad timing as much as they were bad taste or bad wording because Adelaide has already promised meaningful change is coming with an external review set to spare no one “from the chairman to the boot studder”.

A lot of the external angst stems from the belief there is a ‘boys club’ operating at Adelaide because Ricciuto is the club-appointed football director on the board and his friend and former teammate Brett Burton is the football manager.

But there are eight other board directors at Adelaide who are equally as responsible for the decision-making and success or failures of the team and they should not escape scrutiny either.

An emotional Mark Ricciuto leaves the field after his last AFL match in an elimination final against Hawthorn in 2007.
An emotional Mark Ricciuto leaves the field after his last AFL match in an elimination final against Hawthorn in 2007.

People don’t doubt Ricciuto has the best interests of the football club at heart. Not many if any wanted to win more than ‘Roo’ in his 312-game career and his success in business has mirrored that in retirement.

He led fearlessly as a captain where his mantra was ‘get on my shoulders’ and his players would follow him into battle often very successfully.

So it’s hardly surprising that when some would question whether he or the board were the right people to lead the club out of the sinkhole it has fallen into, he would get defensive.

Ricciuto doesn’t admit he got it wrong very often, and apologises even less, but intentional or not he knows his weekend comments were at worst perceived as arrogant and insulting and at best of no comfort to supporters who are hurting.

As one fan reacted on social media, the board and its directors are custodians of the club, they do not own it, and they do not tell members what to do.

“That didn’t come out right and I want to fix that up,’’ Ricciuto clarified on Monday morning.

“I respect and love the Adelaide Football Club supporters, always have and always will.”

Now Ricciuto and the club have the chance to “fix up” more than just his weekend gaffe.

The external review can bring change to a football club that cannot claim to be ‘the team for all South Australians’ if it doesn’t listen to its members and dictates to them instead.

reece.homfray@news.com.au

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Original URL: https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/afl/expert-opinion/reece-homfray/reece-homfray-review-presents-mark-ricciuto-and-board-a-really-chance-to-fix-up-adelaide-crows/news-story/d39fa79f98deee62d97b4dd2244a640c