Jon Anderson follows the rise of Matt and Brad Crouch from star juniors to elite Crows
FROM the first moment the Adelaide recruiters saw Matt and Brad Crouch, they knew the club needed them. Not just one, but both of them. How did the Crows manage to pull it off?
SOMETIMES it’s all about the decisions you make. Say, for instance, had Adelaide’s two key recruiters not chosen to travel to Warrnambool on May 1, 2011.
It would have meant Matt Rendell and Hamish Ogilvie missing a half-back flanker for the North Ballarat Rebels named Brad Crouch gathering 35 disposals off a half-back flank, including 19 contested possessions, six clearances and a dashing goal.
And maybe led to the Adelaide Crows not possessing two of the AFL’s most hard-nosed combatants in the forms of Brad and Matt Crouch.
Twenty years ago the Crouch brothers would have been called Brad and Chris Scott, such is their old-fashioned desire for anything that involves competition or fierceness for possession of that red ball.
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Ogilvie, who is now Adelaide’s national recruiting manager, first became aware of Brad Crouch when he played in the National U16 Championships for Vic Country.
“When he was a 17-year-old I saw him playing for Ballarat against Geelong at Warrnambool. He played half-back and kicked this goal which was the moment Matty (Rendell) and I said ‘wow, this bloke is a bit better than just a really talented 17-year-old’,” recalled Ogilvie.
“We then started to think he could be in the mini-draft mix for the best four players in the country aged 17, of which Jaeger O’Meara was going to be one.
“It was a little bit scary because Brad did break his leg twice in his 18-year-old year, but his best games in his 17-year-old year were outstanding and the jets all do that at that age.
“At one of the TAC Cup finals, Matty and I noticed Brad, who wasn’t playing, doing his extra running at the breaks in the game.
“It was pretty smart by his coach Phil Partington to say, ‘Hey, look at this kid, look how hard he works’.
“We just thought it showed his desire, so it was another clincher. If we couldn’t get Brad, we were out. We weren’t going to go for anybody else because the cost was pretty big.”
And so began a love affair between the Crouch boys, who had played for the Beaufort Crows in different years as 16-year-olds against men in the Central Highlands League, and another murder of Crows in Adelaide.
Originally, this was going to be a tale of two kids from Beaufort who have helped put a small former Goldfields town back on the map, 160 years since its halcyon days.
The Crouch brothers have never lived in Beaufort, yet for all intents and purposes they are the most famous products along with Shane O’Bree of a place that can put the “C” into cold in the middle of winter.
Google the brothers and you will find all types of Beaufort mentions; even reference the AFL Media Guide and Beaufort proudly appears as their football place of beginning.
And weren’t the Crouch brothers both seen supporting the Beaufort Crows when they went down to the Hepburn Burras in the Central Highlands League Grand Final last weekend?
As their Ballarat-based father Phil explains, it has become something of a bush myth but one the family is more than happy to go along with.
“They’ve never lived in the town but both played a year with the seniors when aged 16 and the Beaufort people like to claim the boys as their own, which is fair enough given they were around the local footy club a lot when they were young,” said Phil Crouch.
“We aren’t a family that are really big on the media stuff so we haven’t corrected it, and anyway, the boys are happy to go along with it because the Beaufort Crows will always be their footy club.”
Phil and Debbie Crouch are teachers and when Phil got moved to Beaufort they decided to become involved in the community through football and netball.
Phil, who ended up playing until 40 and has coached the club in three different stints, believed the years both boys played with the men at Beaufort has helped them get to where they are today, an assessment Ogilvie agrees with.
“They are a throwback to a different generation,” Ogilvie said.
“Old-school country fellas who have a beer after the game, just good, hard, honest blokes.
“It was great they had played against men, understood the changeroom and when not to talk.”
That the boys ended up at the same club was a dream, one that even Ogilvie doubted would happen.
The Crows had pick 23 in the 2013 draft, a year after they had taken Brad as a 17-year-old.
They wanted an inside midfielder in a draft in which Patrick Cripps, Luke Dunstan and George Hewett fitted that bill.
“We were hoping like hell that Matt would get to our pick,” Ogilvie said. “It was a tricky draft that had four or five really high-quality inside-mids.
“We worked it and worked it, twisted it every way and voted and argued because it was so hard to separate those kids on performances.
“Obviously Matt got a couple of extra ticks because his brother was at the club but his performances on his own stacked up.”
Adelaide thought that Matt Crouch would make it through to pick 15, but the club was not sure he would last until their pick 23.
“We went up to see them the next day and Debbie was so relieved, saying she had a dream the night before the draft that he would get to Adelaide,” Ogilvie said.
The Crows hadn’t given the family any strong indication they would take Matt, so they just sat and waited.
Once done, Matt was off, moving in with Patrick Dangerfield just as his brother had done a year earlier.
Then a host family — Sav and Maria Ruggiero — looked after the boys for a year before they moved in together.
Ogilvie believes their bond is stronger today than ever before.
“I reckon they are closer now than they were at the time of the draft.
“Back then they used to blue and argue a bit. Now they are that tight, as thick as thieves, living together,” he said.
“At under-18 level Brad was a running half-back who kicked the ball a lot and kicked goals, broke the 50 and not playing as much on ball, whereas Matt was the real inside mid accumulator like Matt Priddis.
“They were very different. Brad has become that inside player.”
As boys growing up in Ballarat, the Crouch brothers were very much football in winter and cricket in summer, being good enough at both to represent their state at junior level.
Brad was a hard-hitting middle-order batsman and tearaway fast bowler before hanging up his creams at age 14 to concentrate on the oval ball, whereas Matt was good enough at just 16 to play senior Premier cricket with Melbourne as a ’keeper/batsman.
He stayed in cricket longer, reaching 17 before deciding something had to give, a decision well vindicated judging by his 2017 season average of 32.9 possessions a game — third to Tom Mitchell and Gary Ablett (Brad finished 18th with 27.94) while Dangerfield, who had been so good to them early on, was fourth behind Matt.
BROTHERS RECRUITED BY THE SAME CLUB (NOT UNDER FATHER-SON RULE)
Jackson Merrett/Zach Merrett — Essendon
Daniel Bradshaw/Darren Bradshaw — Brisbane
Peter Burgoyne/Shaun Burgoyne — Port Adelaide
Xavier Clarke/Raphael Clarke — St Kilda
Chad Cornes/Kane Cornes — Port Adelaide
Brad Crouch/Matt Crouch — Adelaide
Ed Curnow/Charlie Curnow — Carlton
Luke Delaney/Cameron Delaney — North Melbourne
Steven Febey/Matthew Febey — Melbourne
Chris Grant/Jamie Grant — Western Bulldogs
Kieren Jack/Brandon Jack — Sydney
Tom McDonald/Oscar McDonald — Melbourne
Shane Parker/Daniel Parker — Fremantle
Matthew Robran/Jonathon Robran — Hawthorn
Scott Russell/Kym Russell — Collingwood
Justin Westhoff/Matthew Westhoff — Port Adelaide
David Cockatoo-Collins/Donald Cockatoo-Collins — Melbourne
Anthony McDonald/James McDonald — Melbourne
Shannon Motlop/Daniel Motlop — North Melbourne
Cameron Guthrie/Zach Guthrie — Geelong
Originally published as Jon Anderson follows the rise of Matt and Brad Crouch from star juniors to elite Crows