Tom Doedee to captain Adelaide Crows in just his 27th match
Adelaide has turned to Tom Doedee, who has just 26 AFL games of experience, to lead the club while Rory Sloane sits on the sidelines. He explains why he’s ready to take on the role.
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Adelaide has handed its interim captaincy to 26-gamer Tom Doedee.
Doedee will take the reins while Rory Sloane is sidelined for up to six weeks with a broken hand.
The 23-year-old played just one game last season due to an ACL injury but was runner-up in the AFL’s Rising Star Award in 2018.
Doedee said he might be only 26 games deep into his AFL career, but he’d had a lot of experience both on and off the field that had given him leadership skills, starting in his junior basketball days.
“Since I was about 12, I started captaining (junior basketball) teams when I was top age,” he said.
“Last year, I obviously missed the whole year (recovering from a torn ACL), but got to develop myself as a coach (with the Crows in the SANFL) and then got to work with a lot of the young blokes who are playing now and then also in my first years in the SANFL we had a bit of an older list so I got to play with some older players who were AFL calibre and I like to think those two experiences have helped me get to here.
“As much as 26 games is not a lot in terms of a big career, those experiences have played a big part in it.”
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Doedee said when coach Matthew Nicks pulled him aside during a weights session to give him the news he couldn’t wipe the smile from his face.
“It’s a big honour … I love this group and how we’ve played, as much as the wins haven’t shown it.”
Doedee is the least experienced member of a leadership group in the league in terms of games and the sixth-youngest.
He said Nicks told him that a few of the other members of the leadership group – including Tom Lynch – had advocated for Doedee to be handed the captaincy because of the “work that I had done with everyone around the group, whether it be the football department, the playing staff, the coaches, everyone”.
Doedee said Sloane had sent him a congratulatory message while recovering from successful surgery on his broken hand, and the injured captain had told him to be himself.
“I’ve been able to learn from (Sloane) … how to compete and lead by example, he’s been incredible in that aspect for a long time,” Doedee said.
“He said: ‘Do me’ and he’d be there to help out.”
Crows coach Matthew Nicks said Doedee, who joined the club via pick 17 at the 2015 national draft, “epitomises everything we want in a leader”.
“He is selfless, resilient and level-headed, both on and off the field, and his performances are at an elite level,” Nicks said.
Sloane became sole captain this year after Taylor Walker, whom he shared the role with last season, stepped down.
Tom Lynch, Matt Crouch and Brodie Smith are the other members of the Crows’ leadership group. The Crows do not have a vice-captain.
Taylor Walker stepped down as captain in September after five seasons, including sharing the mantle with Sloane last year.
Walker, who the AFL Players’ Association voted as best captain in 2016-17, could provide invaluable guidance to Doedee, seven years his junior, if he took on the role temporarily.
Doedee is the least experienced member of a leadership group in the league and the sixth-youngest – Carlton’s Sam Walsh, 19, is the only teenager.
Smith this year described Doedee as “being a 30-year-old since he got here”.
According to former St Joseph’s College First XVIII football coach Jono Holt, Doedee “oozed leadership and always has”.
Doedee was just 11 when his brother, Harley, lost both feet in a car accident, which Holt said would have made the Crow grow up quickly.
Later, Doedee became deputy school captain of St Joseph’s.
Holt was unsurprised to see Doedee in the leadership group at Adelaide and texted “once a leader, always a leader” to him when he was elevated in January.
“He’s a ripper,” Holt said.
Doedee grew up in Lara, near Geelong and was an under-18 Vic Country basketballer who became serious with footy in his draft year.
Geelong Falcons talent manager Mick Turner said having the right young players in leadership roles could spur older teammates.
“Tom was a pretty quiet kid when he was with us but he knew where he was heading and was very organised and focused,” Turner said in March this year.
“Your leaders have to play well and he has the character to do that – he’s always had leadership qualities.”
Doedee arrived at the Crows via pick 17 in the 2015 national draft and his games total would not be so low if not for his ACL injury.
His first AFL defensive coach, ex-Crow and Cat James Podsiadly, called Doedee a natural leader.
“He understands to be an elite player, you have to have your head screwed on your shoulders,” Podsiadly told News Corp.
“In his first season, every week he would be at (development coach) Paul Thomas’s desk, watching vision, asking how he could get better.
“He was really attentive in line meetings – and knew all the answers too.”
As for the question as to who will replace Sloane as skipper for Monday night’s game against St Kilda and beyond, Crows assistant Matthew Clarke said the club had yet to discuss it.
“The model of leadership group is that you’ve got a number of people there who are able to step up and toss the coin,” Clarke said on Tuesday.
CROWS SHOULD SHARE CAPTAINCY: BICKLEY
Simeon Thomas-Wilson, Reece Homfray
Rory Sloane is expected to spend at least a month on the sidelines with a broken hand, opening up a leadership void at the struggling Crows.
As the side searches for its first win, dual premiership winning captain Mark Bickley says the Crows should not anoint a replacement captain, but share the role around to cover for Sloane.
As revealed by News Corp on Monday, scans showed that Sloane had fractured his left hand in Saturday’s loss to West Coast.
After weighing up surgery, Crows head of science and medicine Steve Saunders said the club’s captain would undergo surgery to repair the fracture at the base of the thumb on his left hand.
Saunders said Sloane was facing a four-to-six week spell on the sidelines, depending on the procedure and how he recovered from the surgery.
“The latter stages of rehabilitation will be based on the return of function of Rory’s thumb rather than a specific time frame,” Saunders said.
“Rory will undergo surgery in the coming days.”
Sloane’s absence for at least the next month means the Crows have a decision to make on who leads the team out at Adelaide Oval against St Kilda on Monday.
Brodie Smith, Tom Doedee, Matt Crouch and Tom Lynch are all in the leadership group under Sloane after Taylor Walker stepped down as co-captain.
Key defender Daniel Talia was another to leave the Crows’ leadership group in the off-season.
Who steps up with Sloane out was yet to be discussed by the club when contacted on Monday.
Bickley said the Crows should share the captaincy between Smith, Doedee, Crouch and Lynch until Sloane returns.
“For me it is largely ceremonial, you toss the coin and talk to the players before the game,” he said.
“I don’t expect any of those (members of the leadership group) to play any better or worse with the captaincy.
“If it is four to six weeks for Sloane, I would like to see all of them have a go at it.”
It continues a luckless year for Sloane, who has also suffered a corked thigh and rolled ankle in the Crows winless season so far.
He is also spending a considerable amount of time out of his usual midfield position.
Stats by Champion Data reveal that Sloane is spending just 52 per cent in the midfield in 2020, as opposed to the 80 to 85 per cent he has racked up in the middle of the ground from 2016 to 2019.
He is being played more on the wing and in the Crows’ forward line, with his time in those two positions for 2020 at 24 and 22 per cent respectively.
This is up for a previous high of just 7 per cent on the wing in 2016 and 14 per cent in the forwards in 2018.
Sloane didn’t attend a single centre bounce in the Crows’ loss to Fremantle as Adelaide looks to rejuvenate a midfield mix that was largely panned for being too slow in 2019.
Overall, he is averaging 9.8 centre bounce attendances in 2020 after averaging 18.5 in 2019.
Even if Sloane’s 2020 stats are “normalised” they are still down on his previous four seasons.
He is averaging 19 disposals a game, down from 24.6 last season, and his 3.4 score involvements is nearly half he had in 2016.
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In 2017, Sloane averaged 7.8 tackles a game in a season where he laid the most tackles out of anyone in the AFL, in 2020 the average is 4.1 for his pressure points to be 42.1 down from 62 in the season where the Crows reached the Grand Final.
Bickley said Sloane had clearly been hampered by his knocks.
“He has tried to do the right thing and play every week but the decision has been taken out of his hands.”
FOGARTY EYES RETURN
Meanwhile, there is positive news about Darcy Fogarty who looks a chance to return from a mysterious shoulder injury he suffered at training two weeks ago.
“He progressed really well through the week just gone, he’d be an outside chance to play this week and we’d be hopeful for that, if not then the following,” Adelaide football manager Adam Kelly told ABC.
“He’s not too far away and he’s certainly made a lot of progress during the week.”
Adelaide is also hopeful Shane McAdam’s rolled ankle in the last quarter is not serious and he will be right to play St Kilda next Monday night.
Originally published as Tom Doedee to captain Adelaide Crows in just his 27th match