Our mid-season roundtable review of Adelaide’s fall from AFL pacesetter to also-ran — and where the Crows go next

WHERE did the Crows go wrong after the AFL grand final — and where do they turn now? The Advertiser’s football experts, Chris McDermott, Mark Bickley and Michelangelo Rucci, review Adelaide’s dramatic season.

• Crows still defensive: Russell
• Adelaide far from basket case: Cornes
• Crows a basket case?: Tredrea

ADELAIDE’S season is on the line with the 11th-ranked Crows needing to win at least seven of their remaining nine home-and-away games to qualifying for a fourth consecutive AFL finals series in September.

Adelaide Crows football manager Brett Burton and Adelaide Crows senior coach Don Pyke speak to the media. Picture: Daniel Kalisz/Getty

But this fall — from AFL minor premier last season to an also ran with a 6-7 record at the mid-season break — is loaded with so many questions of what happened at West Lakes on the

Crows’ players return for pre-season training before Christmas.

There is the extraordinarily high injury rate — and the contentious pre-season camp on the Gold Coast and the break with the Collective Mind group that was supposed to make the Crows mentally stronger and better connected.

The Crows stare during the anthem before the AFL grand final in 2017

The Advertiser has reviewed the Crows’ season — and the Collective Mind saga — with a roundtable session with columnists and former Adelaide captains Chris McDermott and Mark Bickley and Sports Editor at Large Michelangelo Rucci.

McDermott notes the Crows are still “in no man’s land”. Bickley adds that Saturday’s “tell-all” media conference at West Lakes has left him “none the wiser as to why Adelaide and Collective Mind have parted ways”.

Adelaide coach Don Pyke talks with skipper Taylor Walker on the bench. Picture: Michael Klein

Adelaide Crows coach Don Pyke at a training session at West Lakes. Picture: Daniel Kalisz/Getty

And Rucci says the next key move from the Adelaide Football Club is to work to “a new agenda”.

“Critically,” he adds, “(the Crows) need to say that they have made cultural decisions about how they will operate as a football club on and off the field — (they should declare) what the Adelaide Football Club should stand for.”

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