Adelaide Crows anthem staredown should be kept for preliminary final: psychologist
A LEADING sports psychologist has warned the Crows not to tinker too much with a winning formula — which now includes that pre-game stance.
VICE-CAPTAIN Rory Sloane has rejected suggestions that the Crows went in with a deliberate strategy to stare down its opponents during the national anthem in the qualfying final at Adelaide Oval last week.
The Crows engaged in a “power” stance appearing to stare down the Greater Western Sydney Giants as they linked arms.
It surprised the football world and has been linked to New Zealand’s rugby union team, the All Blacks’ famous pre-game Haka performance.
But star midfielder Sloane, who watched the game from the coaches’ box following an appendectomy just nine days earlier, has maintained that it was not pre-planned, nor will it be addressed ahead of next week’s preliminary final.
“(Is there a) Plan? There wasn’t much to that, really,” he said.
“We don’t have to link arms every time.
“We haven’t spoken about it at all really. It’ll just be business as usual.”
But leading Australian sports psychologist Phil Janucey said Adelaide should continue with the same routine in the preliminary final.
Jauncey, who works the NRL powerhouse the Brisbane Broncos, believes the Crows pre-game approach, when they stood apart with arms out in a power stance, was not about scaring their opponents.
“The psychology behind doing that (take on an intimidatory pose), logically is to distract the opposition,” Jauncey said. “But it very rarely has that effect, if that is the object.
“But it can help them (the Crows), as in ‘We’re serious; we’re ready for battle.’
“It’s about getting into battle mode, just like in Africa when the tribes that attack start screaming and yelling or the Indians in America had a war dance.
“Our rule of thumb is: you don’t change something if it’s working.
“Stick to it. If you do change a thing it can have a good effect but it can also have a bad effect.”
Crows forward Josh Jenkins said the stance was about being prepared and designed to get the players in the right frame of mind.
“It was less about them and more about us — it was just a little mental thing that we wanted,” Jenkins told Fox Sports.
“It was more about us ensuring we were ready to go because the national anthems aren’t played for every game so we had to ensure we were ready to go.
“It was just a little trigger for us in our minds that ‘hey, this is a time to stand strong and be ready and think about what we’re about to do.
“So it was less about GWS and more about us.
“It was a collective leadership group thing but I think Tex might have been the man behind that idea.
“So it worked for us but I know people are thinking it was us trying to intimidate the opposition but it was more about flicking the switch for us.”
There has been much debate over what the stance stood for and whether it worked.
GWS football manager Wayne Campbell was reported as saying he didn’t affect the outcome, while former Hawthorn champion and now commentator Dermott Brereton described it as “genius”.