Adelaide Crows get to start a new era with a feel-good outsider

ANALYSIS: At least the Crows have smashed one image. The “old boys club” is gone.

Adelaide Football Club announce the new CEO - Andrew Fagan (right) with President Rob Chapman. Photo Sarah Reed.

AT least the Crows have smashed one image. The “old boys club” is gone.

The Adelaide Football Club’s new chief executive — Andrew Fagan — has emerged from the outside. No SANFL link. No AFL baggage.

From 107 candidates, Fagan fits perfectly at a time when the Crows are most conscious of the frustrations amid their supporter base.

As chairman Rob Chapman noted — as Adelaide sits out its fourth AFL final series in five years — “mediocrity is not acceptable” at West Lakes.

Fagan, 43, says he quizzed the board as much as the Adelaide directors questioned him.

“And I was open and honest — I told what I thought: The club had not met the expectations of the supporter base,” he said. “It is 16 years since the last flag — that is too many years.”

The beauty in Fagan’s appointment for a Crows board that is feeling the heat is the immediate reaction from the membership.

There is no skeleton from another AFL clubs as unfairly tainted former Port Adelaide chief executive and Crows fan Mark Haysman.

Fagan can start in the job without his past — particularly in SANFL politics — following him to the desk at West Lakes.

His resume is loaded with experiences in world sport and rugby. He leaves the Australian Rugby Union — and all its worldly opportunities — after just seven months because “I am a club man at heart”.

He is not only an outsider to the Adelaide clique, he also is an outsider to the AFL. However, his work was known to new AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan when the Crows ran his appointment past AFL House.

The real measure of Fagan’s work at West Lakes will be how he redefines the Adelaide Football Club after the mess created by the Kurt Tippett saga in 2012 and the lack of on-field success recently.

He notes the “brand” is strong and well known. He loves the “19th Man” concept. He admires what Adelaide Oval can deliver his club. He understands the Crows need to be measured by on-field success.

“Andrew has a vision of where we could be,” Chapman says. “And we like it.”

Fagan has now tied himself to Adelaide’s win-loss record — and delivering flags.