Graham Cornes: Was Brodie Smith’s ACL injury the catalyst for the Adelaide Crows’ downfall?
The Crows have been spiralling downwards since losing the 2017 grand final against Richmond. But it all might have been different had their best player not done his knee and missed that fateful game, writes Graham Cornes.
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It is a perfect storm of adversity bearing down ominously on the Adelaide Football Club and there is no obvious safe harbour in which to seek refuge.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better. If that sounds pessimistic it is the unfortunate reality.
On the field there has been the occasional flash of competence – brilliance even – but it has been quickly extinguished when the opposition gets serious.
That elusive first win of the season may happen, but every opponent is now wary. The incentive not to be beaten by a dysfunctional outfit is a powerful motivational force. The Crows are unlikely to find their opposition napping.
The Adelaide Football Club has never been in a worse position. When the whole image of the club is built on the performances of the team, it is devastating to look at the premiership ladder.
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It is incomprehensible that such a proud team with the history of the Crows should languish at the bottom of the ladder at 0-11!
Where did it go wrong? How did a team that dominated the competition and reached a grand final in 2017, a team that controlled the first quarter of that grand final, suddenly fall so far?
There is one moment, now long forgotten that precipitated the Crows headlong fall from league leaders to winless cellar dweller and it has nothing to do with a pre-season camp.
In the first quarter of the qualifying final in 2017, Brodie Smith, the most important player in Adelaide’s attractive, attacking game plan, lunged at GWS’s rising star, Josh Kelly, who was able to sidestep around him.
Unfortunately, in the process, Smith propped on his right leg, then went to ground clutching his knee.
It seemed such an innocuous incident, even when he limped off, but his anterior cruciate ligament was shredded.
While the Crows did thrash Geelong in the preliminary final two weeks later, the team has never been the same. It was the first ill wind of the perfect storm.
The exhilarating, free-flowing, high-scoring game plan disappeared at quarter-time of the 2017 grand final.
They say one player shouldn’t make a difference, but this one did.
Then three months later some players presented for pre-season training in a condition that was less than satisfactory for professional athletes. Even so the Crows won six of the first nine games of 2018.
However, injuries, particularly, soft tissue injuries (sound familiar), took their toll.
Missing Taylor Walker, Rory Sloane, Mitch McGovern, Brad Crouch and Smith, they were thrashed by Melbourne in a Round 10 clash at Alice Springs.
Then the wheels really fell off.
A year after playing in the grand final, they missed the finals by one game.
Don Pyke never used the excuse of injuries, but they impacted severely — much more than any rot about a pre-season camp.
Measured against expectation, it was a disaster — but no reason to strip the playing list back to a minimum and start again. Which is where the list management of the club has to be held accountable.
How is it that Charlie Cameron and Jake Lever were able to leave after the 2017 grand final? Would a Crows team be stronger if McGovern, Alex Keath, Hugh Greenwood and Cam-Ellis Yolmen were still available?
It’s tempting to add Sam Jacobs and Eddie Betts to that list but their time had come.
And who could the club have drafted with those two first round draft picks that they gave Carlton for Bryce Gibbs?
Things are not always as they seem, but this looked like gross mismanagement.
Then the ill-winds strengthened as the club acceded to demands for a “review”, which in hindsight might have done more harm than good because it resulted in the football operations of the club being stripped back to bare essentials.
The new coach would not be appointed until mid-October when he would have no say in assembling the playing group that would determine his future.
It also looks as if Nicks could have been given the wrong brief.
“Relationships” and “connections” may have deteriorated under the previous regime, but fitness, skills and game plan are far more important.
However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the new coach needed every available minute to school his playing list, the team was no longer able to meet as a group.
Even when they eventually could, the contact time was severely limited. How can you educate footballers when you can’t train as a team?
All the time this was happening the media was having a field day, particularly some Victorian media to whom rumour and innuendo constitute news.
A club might have right on its side but constant speculation and criticism eventually must take a toll.
Compare the coverage of the Richmond “groping scandal”, the images of which are there for everyone to see, to the rubbish written about a Crows training camp of which there is no evidence.
There is another issue which must also have impacted at the West Lakes. As the land around Football Park has been sold off and the developers have moved in, it is no longer a football environment. It’s a bleak construction site.
How can you sell the history of the club and images of a rich heritage when you are surrounded by rubble?
It’s not a huge factor, but it must impact on the players’ morale.
There is no quick solution to the woes at West Lakes.
While the club is one of the strongest in the competition, other issues have compounded to bring the team to its knees.
Eventually that perfect storm will dissipate and pass.
However, having the capacity to ride it out will test the patience of every Crows fan.
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Originally published as Graham Cornes: Was Brodie Smith’s ACL injury the catalyst for the Adelaide Crows’ downfall?