Key forward Tom Lynch reveals the Crows will lick their wounds as they try to recover from their unexpected loss to Carlton
Crows veteran Tom Lynch reveals the pain players are feeling as their season takes another hit and says they are desperate to rediscover their mojo — for themselves and the fans.
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Adelaide leader Tom Lynch has revealed the hurt that the Crows players are feeling as they deal with the wash-up of their ninth loss of the season.
Saturday’s 27-point loss to the 16th-placed Carlton is possibly the lowest point of Adelaide’s 2019 season to date and Lynch said the focus of the week would be uniting the team.
“We’re pretty upset at the moment … we’ve lost another game of footy and it’s not where we pictured we would be and what we’ve worked towards and what we will continue to work towards,” he said.
“Right now, we recover and we spend time with each other because we’re all hurting.
“It’s not just a couple of individuals, we’re all in this together and the problems that we’re going to be able to rectify, we’ve got to do it together.”
The 134-game veteran said the role of the seven-man leadership group (which also includes co-captains Taylor Walker and Rory Sloane and Richard Douglas, Josh Jenkins, Daniel Talia and Matt Crouch) this week would be to instil a sense of belief in the playing group.
“(And to) challenge and demand consistency of performance and really the only other thing to do is go out there and train and prepare the best we can for next week,” he said.
“The weeks come around pretty quickly in AFL football … we’ve got to get out of it together.”
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Lynch said the Crows were desperate to play better, not just for themselves, but for the fans.
“They’re the heartbeat of our footy club and we’d obviously like to be playing better for them,” he said.
“We know a lot of fans have been with us for a long time and we’ve felt enormous support especially in my time at the footy club and hopefully we can turn it around and give them some hope in the last few rounds of the year.”
When asked what was currently missing in the Crows line-up he replied: “Yeah, there’s a few things missing at the moment”.
“We certainly aren’t playing the brand of footy that we know we’re capable of or that we’ve shown, which is obviously disappointing and that eludes to a lot of things missing.
“Right now, we’ve got some work to do and with four games left we’re running out of time.
“We feel like there’s only one way out it, which is to lick our wounds and get on with it and do our best and hopefully we can fill those holes.”
And as the Crows prepare to face the resurgent St Kilda — who have scored more than 100 points for their past two matches — at Adelaide Oval on Saturday night, Lynch said the season “is where it is”.
“We’re eight and we’re back in the pack and we have to win a certain number of games to be able to qualify for finals and that’s just the reality of it all,” he said.
Breaking down the loss to Carlton, Lynch said one issue was that there weren’t “enough Crows jumpers in the picture when there was a loose ball”.
Coach Don Pyke’s take on the game was similar: “Clearly from a numbers viewpoint … today we got beaten badly in the contest and that’s been a trend.
‘When we lose in the contest base, our ability to actually win games of footy is challenged and we’re not able to sustain that for long enough and that’s what we’re working really hard behind the scenes going: we’ve tried a few different things, we’ve tried some different training methods. We’ll again engage with our group, look through it and go: ‘Well, what can we do differently this week to give ourselves a chance to come out and play far better, that we need to do against St Kilda?”
In his post-game press conference Pyke echoed Lynch’s sentiments that the Crows players as a group, were hurting.
“Look, clearly everyone in there is disappointed, we came here to win a game of footy and performed poorly and walk away with a loss,” he said.
“That stings.”