Adelaide Crows have reached rock bottom, but now the long climb back to relevance can begin
It’s a year to the day since the Crows last won a game, and looking at who they play in the coming six weeks, there’s a real chance they won’t win again this season. Reece Homfray explains why.
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Adelaide has reached its ground zero.
Vision of coach Matthew Nicks moving drink bottles around the changeroom floor to demonstrate where his players should be standing while they stared blankly at halftime on Saturday was a defining image of where they are at.
SCROLL DOWN: CROWS BOARD BACKS NICKS
We wrote after Round 2 that things would get worse before they got better for a club that had never bottomed out in its 30-year history, and they have.
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Before the weekend the Round 3 loss to Gold Coast was the Crows’ lowest ebb but they now have a new base camp to start the long climb back to relevance.
Imagining how things could get any worse than being belted by the 17th-ranked team by 69 points to go 0-9 is too hard to even consider.
And so at halftime on Saturday the players sat in a circle in the rooms and watched Nicks place three drink battles on the floor then outstretch both arms as if to say ‘so what now?’
You’d love to have been a fly on the wall to hear exactly what was said when Rory Atkins got up and moved a drink bottle next to each one that Nicks had put in place.
“It was a demonstration to our boys about ‘look, what do you want to do? Do you want to be us, or just play randomly?” Nicks said post-match.
It might have been as simple as ‘how about you blokes man up?’.
North Melbourne exited defensive 50 way too easily on Saturday and in the first quarter Luke Davies-Uniacke marked a kick-in, turned and ran almost 50m before a Crows player even came into shot on the TV screen.
Adelaide supporters will cop being outplayed because they have to. The list is average, they are rebuilding and injuries – which were always going to happen – have exposed them for having very little depth.
Rory Sloane, Taylor Walker, Brad Crouch, Tom Doedee, Wayne Milera and Darcy Fogarty are among their most important players and all missed on Saturday.
But being outworked? Premiership Hawk Jordan Lewis noted another example in his post-match analysis.
“What they won’t cop and what Matty Nicks was alluding to was the effort, there was a passage of play where Ben Keays was out on his feet and he was running past Adelaide players to put pressure on the opposition – and that signalled to us that not everyone is really trying their absolute best,” Lewis said on Fox Footy.
“Sorry”, Nicks was moved to say to supporters post-match.
Crows fans also heard that in July last year when Don Pyke said he wanted to “apologise to members and fans” after their Showdown loss to Port Adelaide.
The coach can say it but the players need to show it.
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Matthew Nicks bizarre halftime address captured in rooms at halftime
Nicks’ press conference was sobering viewing for fans: “We’re playing AFL football”, “we had far too many individuals that didn’t perform their roles”, “nowhere near the level” and “we didn’t even look like what it is that we’re trying to achieve as a football team” were among his comments.
You’ve got to wonder whether Nicks over-estimated the list he was inheriting after last year’s clean-out at West Lakes.
Chasing a flag for the past three years combined with inaction at the trade table has caught up with them, so where to from here, both what’s left of this season and beyond?
They have Melbourne, Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs in their next three games then play Carlton, Hawthorn, Geelong, GWS and Richmond.
Supporters found a silver lining in their fighting loss to Essendon in Round 8 but another loss like to North Melbourne will test even the most optimistic of fans.
While the finish line can’t come quick enough for the players, that’s when the real work for the club needs to start.
It’s one thing to go to the draft with the No.1 pick and a bold hand, but Adelaide has to get aggressive at the trade table as well because the experienced core it has right now isn’t enough.
Patience in a draft-led rebuild will only last so long and how is it fair that Chayce Jones, Will Hamill, Andrew McPherson and Fischer McAsey are having to star for the Crows to be competitive?
Last year came the clean-out, this year came the pain, and now Adelaide needs to restock and the bolder the better or that pain will only linger.
‘WE HAVE YOUR BACK’, CROWS TELL NICKS
Adelaide board member Rod Jameson has defended Matthew Nicks’ public persona in the wake of a 0-9 start to his coaching career and says while the current pain is a necessary evil of rebuilding, the club cannot expose young players to devastating losses like to North Melbourne on Saturday.
Nicks was urged by the club’s inaugural coach Graham Cornes to abandon his “Mr Nice Guy” persona last week after seeing vision of him patting his players on the back after their Round 8 loss to Essendon.
Speaking on ABC radio after the Crows’ horror 69-point loss to North Melbourne, Jameson praised Nicks’ public and private messaging during the winless start to the year.
“He’s a contemporary coach so I almost totally disagree with (those suggestions), I think as a leader you have to be composed at the right time and yes he will show some frustration and anger, but I just don’t see the benefit of a coach at any elite sport lambasting or highlighting a deficiency of a player publicly,” Jameson said.
“Then 24 hours later you’ve got to go back into your four walls of your football club and say ‘yes I did that for a reason’ or you have to mend the relationship you have with that player or playing group.
“There is no doubt there is a time and a place for it, and I can guarantee you that he will be delivering his message very loud and clear behind the four walls with the greatest respect regardless of the public perception of how he delivers his message or how he looks in the box when he is coaching.
“I’ve been involved in our football club from day one in some way, shape or form … and it pains me to see us in this position.
“I’m not justifying any reason as to why we should be in the latter part of the ladder or sitting at the bottom, but I can categorically say the passion to get us back to where we need to be is at the forefront of everyone involved and is certainly Matthew Nicks’ absolute driver, and he’d absolutely hate that record against his name.
“I don’t want to say it but the first 10 years (of the club’s history) when I was playing we had some horrific losses … you never like it and you hate going through it, but every club does at some point you go through a stage like this and it’s not ideal, but you have to experience it.”
Jameson said the biggest challenge for Nicks was blooding young players as part of the rebuild but making sure they were not exposed to nightmare results like against the Kangaroos on Saturday.
“Two and three years ago we started planning to recruit and draft players to fill roles at a particular time, so the drafting and planning and strategy behind football which is the club’s absolute number one priority is always and constant, and like most of us I’ve had a look at the data and research – Adelaide is the only club that has never won a wooden spoon,” Jameson said.
“Adelaide should be very proud that we’ve always worked hard to stay in the higher part of the ladder and the worst position was 14th in 2011, it’s not our focus to just throw away a season and say ‘we can’t make finals so let’s write it off’.
“What the team needs to do is get games into players but the challenge will be you just can’t expose really bad performances and huge losses to young players, you don’t want to break them, and you want to try them in different roles to see what they’ve got.”
Adelaide’s hierarchy has repeatedly said Nicks declined an offer to recruit a senior assistant coach to work alongside him this season, but Jameson said that may change.
“It’s easy to make those assumptions and why would you think that we’re not already doing that anyway? Every coach has a mentor or go-to (person) and the friendships among all of that,” he said.
“We understand his rationale as to why he didn’t think (he needed) any other coaches or perceived senior coaches to come in and support him, he was very much supportive of the current group and the experience and knowledge they have as playing and coaching, not always at AFL senior level but 10 years in the SANFL which is the next best competition so they clearly know what they are doing.”