Crows vow to have answers soon as Matthew Pavlich flies in to add his expertise to external review
Crows chairman Rob Chapman says he hopes to wrap up the Crows external review “sooner rather than later” as Fremantle champion Matthew Pavlich flies to Adelaide to get started.
Crows
Don't miss out on the headlines from Crows. Followed categories will be added to My News.
AFL great Matthew Pavlich will fly into Adelaide in the next 36 hours as the under-fire Crows vow to ramp up the external review into the club’s football operations.
With the three other members of the panel — Australian Football Hall of Famer Jason Dunstall, high performance expert Tim Gabbert and performance psychologist Jonah Oliver — having already spent time at the West Lakes club this week, Adelaide chairman Rob Chapman said former Docker Pavlich, based in Perth, was scheduled to be the final visitor on Thursday or Friday.
And he said the club wanted to “wrap up’’ its review “sooner rather than later’’ after originally expecting it to take about six weeks.
Stream every match of the 2019 Toyota AFL Finals Series before the Grand Final live and on-demand on KAYO SPORTS. Get your 14-day free trial and start streaming instantly >
Having announced the review and four-man panel the day after its disappointing season ended with a loss to the Western Bulldogs following a second consecutive year without finals, Chapman indicated he hoped the group’s recommendations would be in the board’s hands by the end of the month.
“I was trying to set an expectation and give us a time frame that was manageable, that we could do it properly and not rush,’’ he told FIVEaa.
“But you know what, and Jason was really good with this too, it was about, ‘let’s get this done sooner rather than later’.
“So I don’t suspect it will take that long. How much less, I'm not sure.
“We want to do it properly but all concerned want to get it done, nail what these key themes are and then let’s deal with them really quickly.’’
Player managers have suggested contract negotiations at Adelaide had been put on hold while the Crows undertake their review but Chapman said discussions were ongoing.
“We still have to do some things that you would normally do at this time of year,’’ he said.
“Andrew (chief executive Andrew Fagan) and I have discussed that because you can’t just pause your football club and all the things that you need to do.
“So we are running them side by side, there is almost parallel processes going on, so where a decision you know is not going to get impacted one way or the other by the review, just keep going, action it.
“Where it might be compromised or might compromise the review, let’s for the sake of a month, hold off.
“We are trying to be sensible about it because we don’t want to muck it up, we want to get it right because it’s a once-only event.’’
Chapman, who was strong and passionate in his praise of Taylor Walker after his decision to relinquish the co-captaincy, describing him as a “rock’’ and someone he would “stand by any day’’, reiterated that the club had not surveyed its players as part of the review.
“I can honestly say that we have not issued a survey to any player in the past several weeks, I can say that, full stop,’’ he said following reports that the club had posed a question that would put coach Don Pyke in a difficult position.
“There was certainly no survey that had a conscious or unconscious bias with the way a question was framed to be detrimental to the coach. It’s just not correct.’’