Crows coach laments lost confidence and low energy as Adelaide’s season hangs in the balance
Following the Crows’ disappointing 27-point loss to Carlton at the MCG, coach Don Pyke has lamented his side’s loss of confidence and signalled a need to find it as key to reviving the season.
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Crows coach Don Pyke has summed up his side’s 27-point loss to Carlton in a very simple way: “Disappointing day, wasn’t it?”.
“Credit to Carlton, but we were poor, we looked like we had low energy and clearly we’re playing with pretty low confidence.”
In the wash-up after losing what would have seemed an unlosable game a month ago, Pyke lamented that the loss of confidence in his side was now showing in terms of poor execution and decision making.
“To me, it’s a bit of a warning sign that guys who you expect are normally going to hit kicks, aren’t,” he said.
“A little bit was the pressure of the game, but a little of them (poor execution) were pretty straight forward kicks.”
The influence of best-on-ground Blue Patrick Cripps — was just too much for the Crows to handle and Pyke said their original plan to combat his play from a midfield viewpoint was to start with “group accountability”.
But as Cripps marched on his merry way to his 39 disposals and 19 clearances (staggering, considering the Crows had a combined 29 clearances for the entire match), Pyke said it became pretty obvious, pretty quickly, that something had to be done.
“He was a significant player in the game and we put Sloaney on to him to try and quell his influence and he did for a little period through the probably the second and third he was less influential and then towards the end he’s had a massive game, there’s no question about that,” the coach said.
“That’s something we’ll reflect on and the hard part is you go into that space you become quite reactive around the stoppage.
“We got badly beaten in the stoppage and (Cripps) was obviously a significant influence in that space.
“We threw up some different options in the coaches box as to what we thought we could do. We probably backed Sloaney in to get that done and it probably took away from his game.
“To his credit, I thought Rory was competitive all day and fought hard to the end, but clearly Cripps was the main player in the game.”
Pyke said regaining his side’s confidence was key to salvaging Adelaide’s season.
“We’ve been working on a few things in terms of trying to get that form and confidence back and we’ll keep going and keep trying some different things and one key thing is I know as much disappointing as today was and as disappointing as the last three or four weeks have been, our season is still very much alive,” he said.
“We sit at 9-9 and we’ve now got to go back to the drawing board and come up and get ready for St Kilda next week.”