Brad Crouch: St Kilda list manager James Gallagher on what’s behind the club’s interest in the Adelaide midfielder
Brad Crouch has profusely apologised for his drug-use error and, while his destination-club St Kilda is concerned by the Crow’s “blue”, the learnings its recruiters garnered while touring American NFL clubs has helped the Saints find perspective.
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James Gallagher calls it ‘football character’.
When St Kilda’s list manager went overseas early last year, the former banking executive was open-minded about what he might learn from some of the sharpest scouts in American sports.
In football terms, it was clear the Saints were out to add some explosive run, frenetic tackle pressure and height when they netted six players in last year’s exchange period.
They were a one-paced, vanilla footy team in 2019.
The Saints always tried hard, but where was the upside and thrill-factor?
Fast forward to the end of 2020 and the quicker, much more potent Saints are on the rise with a young core that clearly has its best football ahead of it.
But the most significant lessons from the US trip might not have been about the on-field talent metrics, but rather what the Saints took-in from a character assessment point of view.
Not all footballers are straight-A students, or don’t have rough edges, or have made mistakes.
And as the Saints attempt to pull off a free agency deal for Adelaide’s Brad Crouch only weeks after he was caught by police with an illicit substance, Gallagher is confident the club knows the types of people who can thrive in a football environment.
And Crouch, Gallagher says, ticks that box.
“Chris Liberatore, our national recruiting manager, and I visited a bunch of NFL and basketball clubs and the NFL guys talk about football character, and when we started asking about it made a lot of sense,” Gallagher said.
“If you have had trouble with guns or violence, it rules you out straight away.
“But if you are not going great at school, or you are not polished with your language or whatever it is maybe that is OK, because that might just be your background or what you had been exposed to.
“But what happens when you get these guys into a footy club?
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“Do they work their backsides off? Do they help their teammates get better? Do they care?
“Are they good company to be around? Are they good in the locker room?
“That is what ultimately determines things.”
The conversation brings Dustin Martin’s extraordinary career into focus, having left high school early to work with his father, only to become one of the greatest players of the modern era.
“The Dustin Martin example is perfect,” Gallagher said.
“I have never met Dustin and I have enormous respect for him. But some people from afar might think that because he might be a bit shy, he might look a bit mean, he doesn’t talk to the media that people then go ‘Geez, is he a bit of a ratbag’?
“But inside the four walls of the footy club you hear the way the Richmond guys talk about him, they couldn’t speak of more highly.
“The care he shows for his teammates and all the extras he does. Boxing, yoga, meditation.
“He makes the whole place better. That is the way I look at players. They might look like something, but let’s get in, find out, do the work.
“They’re the type of people we want to bring in.”
Crouch, 26, has profusely apologised for his error at season’s end after drawn-out talks on his future with the Crows. But the Saints want him and he wants the Saints.
There are also moves in place to snare tough Richmond forward-midfielder Jack Higgins and back-up tall forward Shaun McKernan, so they aren’t exposed if King or even Rowan Marshall get hurt.
Gallagher says Crouch, Adelaide’s 2019 best-and-fairest winner, would bring a lot to the club, which is why they will try to nab him in the free agency period from Friday.
“You speak to anyone who has played with Brad Crouch over the last few years and including guys at other clubs and you talk to his current teammates,“ he said.
“You watch how competitive he is on the field, you talk to him about his family and his partner and he is a good guy, a good fella, Brad.
“He has made a blue a few weeks ago and we don’t sit here and say ‘Nah that is OK, we don’t care about that.’ We do care about it, but he’s not the only one who has made a blue like that.
“From our perspective, that has happened, but it is all about what happens next and what does he do about it?
“We go in eyes wide-open on that, but I’m really confident it won’t be an (ongoing) issue for him.”
Crouch would slot into a key onball role where he would join Jack Steele, Zak Jones, Jade Gresham, Brad Hill, Jack Billings, Hunter Clark, Daniel Hannebery and Seb Ross, among others in the midfield.
It was an engine room which needed a revamp in 2019 to add some elite attributes. The trade strategy was bold, and helped St Kilda take a big step forward.
Gallagher was at pains to describe his list management role as only a small part in an accomplished team, led by Simon Lethlean, David Rath and new coach Brett Ratten, among many others.
“The coaching group has done a fantastic group and Lethers and Rathy and Jarryd Roughead have really helped lead all of that,” he said.
On and off the field the club has been transformed.
St Kilda is not only more talented, and dynamic and competitive, but also more connected. Clearly, Brad Hill, Zak Jones, Dan Butler, Dougal Howard and Paddy Ryder have all fit like a glove in red, white and black.
“We had some good AFL players on our list, but we needed better than good players. We needed guys with elite attributes,” Gallagher said.
“And we needed to bring some attributes into our footy club that we didn’t have. That is Jones’s power, and his fast feet. Hilly’s speed, his running power.
“’Butts’ is a livewire. He’s a tackler and he’s really creative.
“’Doug’ l, I love him, he’s my favourite player. He’s got speed, he’s a really quick guy. He’s an ultra-competitor, and he’s a fantastic fella.
“He demands a lot from his teammates and he’s a good lad. We needed to look different and all of those guys — they have all got proper speed, they are real fast.
“But it wasn’t a case of just ‘Let’s go find some fast guys’. It was very targeted and specific.”
And the same can be said from a character perspective.
“You talk to them about what they value off field and how their teammates talk about them and there is a lot of love there,” he said.
“We knew they were going to come in and bring some real professionalism And that has changed the dynamic a little bit off field as well which, for our club, was probably as important as changing the dynamic on the field.”
So, after jumping up eight spots on the ladder in 2020, what beckons for the Saints next year?
Gallagher said it would be the players in their first-to-fourth years who would drive their improvement.
“Who knows next year? We think this year has been a good step in the right direction and our finish to the year I think was probably fair,” he said.
“I reckon we are a bit of a way off the top-four teams this year but we are aspiring to be better next year.
“That will come from Howard, who has played 64-games, Marshall who has played 52 games, (Callum) Wilkie 41, (Nick) Coffield 36, (Hunter) Clark 47, Gresham missed half a year, (Ben) Paton 35 games, (Josh) Battle 40, (Ben) Long 45.
“These are boys, and Max King has played 18 games, they are in the infancy of their careers.
“If we have the right program around them, they will improve and we will demand they improve.
“A lot of the improvement for us next year is going to come from the guys already on our list.”