Adelaide and Richmond have met in two fork-in-the-road moments and gone down two very different paths in the past three years
As the Crows search for a new coach they should look inside the Tigers’ locker room more so than their playbook for answers, Reece Homfray writes after today’s grand final.
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The last team to beat Richmond this season was Adelaide, in Round 13, and the lesson for the Crows since that fork-in-the-road moment is not found in the Tigers’ playbook but in their locker room.
And whoever is appointed Adelaide’s next coach could do well to read up on what’s gone on behind closed doors at Punt Road, not just this year but the last three.
Both teams went into that Round 13 game at Adelaide Oval in June with a 7-5 record, but emerged from the mid-season bye a week later to take two very different routes.
After winning by 33 points the Crows sensationally collapsed to finish 11th with a 10-12 record and coach Don Pyke was gone.
The Tigers regrouped to finish third with a 16-6 record on their way to a second flag in three years for coach Damien Hardwick who can do no wrong.
Sound familiar?
Two years ago the two teams ran onto the MCG after preliminary final triumphs looking to end premiership droughts stretching 19 and 37 years respectively.
Again, Adelaide collapsed, picking the worst of days to have a bad day, and lost by 48 points.
Richmond rose to the challenge, seized the moment and laid the foundation for a premiership era.
In the two years since September 30, 2017, Adelaide hasn’t even played a finals game let alone challenge for the cup again.
And while Pyke wasn’t sacked per se this month, he read the room as an internal and external review raged around him.
Hardwick, like Richmond’s board, survived its own review and coup in 2016 and instead what emanated from that was connection. Player to player, and player to coach.
Ahead of the 2017 season Hardwick introduced the ‘Triple H’ sessions, asking each player to stand in front of the group and share a deeply personal story of ‘hero, hardship and highlight’. Those in the room say the tears flowed freely and often.
Adelaide would have read that with interest as they sifted through the wreckage of the grand final implosion.
‘How can we become closer off the field and mentally stronger on it?’ they asked themselves, and we all know the path they went down.
Richmond too had a pre-season camp to the Gold Coast this year. Only the centrepiece of their camp was reading a letter they had received from their parents or someone close to them. They were the replies to letters the Tigers were told to write and send before Christmas.
Hardwick then picked up the pen before last week’s preliminary final against Geelong and left a handwritten note next to every player’s locker for them to read before the game.
Adelaide’s inaugural AFLW premiership coach, Bec Goddard, did the same for her Crows in the other 2017 grand final which ended very differently.
Hardwick left the letters in the same spot he would leave every player a present before every game this year. There were hockey pucks, T-shirts, hammers and cassettes and all had a special meaning.
And last Friday morning when he addressed the playing group he became emotional, telling them how proud he was regardless of what was to happen against GWS 24 hours later.
One Tiger revealed Hardwick had handed a lot of control to his assistants so he could focus on the “emotional layers” of coaching in recent seasons.
Perhaps that’s the secret. That’s why there are 25 people in a coaches’ box but only one coach.
And for a coach who knows his players so intimately, you’d love to know the conversations he had with debutant Marlion Pickett during the week.
The player/coach relationship was also highlighted at Collingwood this year. After the despair of last year’s grand final loss, the Magpies stuck together “side-by-side” as their clubsong boasts and returned to make a preliminary final.
It was on the back of coach Nathan Buckley’s new-found empathy and a willingness to show his vulnerabilities to his players.
There was more than a touch of that about Luke Beveridge and the Dogs when they won their surprise flag in 2016 as well.
The blueprint for modern-day success is now obvious and as important as game-plan, match-ups, list management and the like is to a football team, it is nothing if the relationship between player and their leader is not welded together in the way Hardwick is to his Tigers.
If the Crows’ review doesn’t unearth that to help guide them on the hunt for their next coach then they don’t have to look far to find it.
reece.homfray@news.com.au
Originally published as Adelaide and Richmond have met in two fork-in-the-road moments and gone down two very different paths in the past three years