Adelaide Crows chief executive Andrew Fagan opens up about the last two years and recent off-season changes at West Lakes
The Crows had gotten a point where change was desperately needed to reboot the club, Adelaide chief executive Andrew Fagan says as he shares some of what the external review found.
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Adelaide Crows chief executive Andrew Fagan says the club had gotten “to a point where you need to make some change” in order “to reboot” after two-years without finals.
Admitting that 2019 had been “one of the tougher years”, Fagan revealed just how deep the discontent at West Lakes had spread in the Crows underperforming seasons saying players and staff were not enjoying “coming to the club every day”.
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After missing finals for the second straight year, the axe fell over key positions at the Crows with head of football Brett Burton and Scott Camporeale sacked following an external review of what had gone wrong at West Lakes.
This added to Don Pyke stepping down from the senior coaching role.
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In an exclusive Q and A with inaugural Crows coach and The Advertiser columnistGraham Cornes, Fagan said they were not scapegoats for the problems.
“It was really tough and not particularly straightforward,” Fagan told Cornes.
“We had underperformed for a couple of years within our footy department - we know that.
“It would be inappropriate for anyone to identify individuals who are no longer part of the club as being the sole source of the problems within the club. That’s just not correct. “Sometimes you do just get to a point where you need to make some change in order to improve the operations of a department.”
Fagan said Pyke was “a great coach” while Burton and Camporeale were “very good people and good operators”.
“But some changes were needed to reboot,” he said.
Fagan also addressed speculation that Burton, a fan favourite as a player but quickly came under fire his role in the ill-fated pre-season Gold Coast camp and fitness program that caused a series of chronic hamstring injuries at West Lakes, had challenged the reasons for his dismissal.
“They are always tough conversations and often people won’t agree,” he said.
“But those matters are always confidential... I have the utmost respect for Brett as a past player, high performance expert and sports administrator.”
Burton’s replacement is set to be announced this week.
Fagan also gave some insight into what the external review, conducted by Hawthorn champion Jason Dunstall, Fremantle great Matthew Pavlich, high performance Tim Gabbert and performance psychologist Jonah Oliver, had uncovered at West Lakes.
“You would like to think that none of those things would surprise you, and 99 per cent did not,” he said.
“There were probably just some areas where maybe the breadth and depth of the issues
amongst certain cohorts were either not as significant or slightly more significant than we thought they might be.
“One of the examples was the extent to which people were feeling pressure and how it was impacting the way in which they were coming to the club every day. Whether that was players or staff, some were genuinely feeling the pressure of the environment. They weren’t enjoying it.
“Through the review it was clear that a lot of people were feeling that pressure and it didn’t matter if you were a regular part of the AFL team or not. There were others as well.”
