How Adelaide’s visit to Melbourne Storm in 2015 started Crows’ premiership push

ON a hot Melbourne day in January, 2015, Adelaide’s new-look leadership group visited Melbourne Storm headquarters, it was the foundation of the Crows’ premiership push.

Taylor Walker celebrates a goal. Picture: Sarah Reed

IT was a sweltering January day in 2015 and Billy Slater was barking instructions to his teammates at the top of his voice.

Melbourne Storm had been shunted off to the ovals at Xavier College for pre-season training because of soccer’s Asian Cup and despite the summer heat, there was no let up from the then 31-year-old superstar.

Coach Craig Bellamy’s men were coming off an ugly end to the previous season, bundled out in the first week of the finals by the Bulldogs in 2014.

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It may have been just January, and it may have been oppressively hot, but standards aren’t allowed to slip at Storm, and those standards are driven by leaders like Slater and captain Cameron Smith.

That obsessive intensity, even at training, was the standout takeaway for a quartet of interested observers who had flown over from Adelaide early that morning to spend a day watching Slater and Smith and Cooper Cronk and Bellamy go about their business.

In the previous June, Bellamy and Storm football manager Frank Ponissi, always looking to learn from others, had spent their bye week visiting AFL club Port Adelaide.

Phil Walsh and Taylor Walker after being named as the new Adelaide captain. Picture: Sarah Reed

They were “blown away” by then Power assistant coach Phil Walsh, who later that year was given his first senior coaching position, at the Adelaide Crows.

Ponissi recalled this week that Walsh was “truly impressive” and so when an email arrived at Storm headquarters from the new Crows coach asking to bring his leaders to watch Melbourne for a day, the answer was easy.

“He was inspirational to watch as a coach. Craig and I both thought he just had a special coaching talent,” Ponissi said.

Walsh had sprung a major surprise when he appointed Taylor Walker as his first Crows captain — even Walker didn’t nominate himself when asked who should lead Adelaide — and wanted his new skipper to get a sense of how the best leaders can create a culture of success.

So Walker, along with Rory Sloane and Nathan Van Berlo flew over with Walsh for a full day at Storm headquarters.

The Crows had a breakfast chat with the Storm leadership group of Smith, Slater, Cronk and Ryan Hinchcliffe, then sat in a Storm team meeting, watched that day’s training session and finally mingled with the Melbourne players.

Storm's Big 3, (from left) Cooper Cronk, Cameron Smith and Billy Slater. Picture: Michael Klein

Asked for feedback, Walsh relayed to Storm its players were “humble and approachable” and had created an “extremely positive environment” which was “warm and welcoming”.

But high among the plaudits for a club which has a culture revered not just in the NRL, but in Australian sport, the visitors were stunned by the “elite standards” Storm produced in their training and meetings, even in January.

There was “no whingeing” from the Melbourne players, despite the oppressive heat they were operating in, and players, especially the leaders, took great ownership of feedback sessions.

They wanted their voices heard, and that was almost expected.

Walsh wanted Walker to see that, to know what it takes to be the best.

The comparisons between the two clubs right now are hard to miss.

Both are minor premiers, both are in preliminary finals and overwhelming favourites to go on and secure their respective premierships.

But there are also significant correlations in how they have responded from tragedies, to re-scale the mountain despite what could have been insurmountable challenges.

Phil Walsh talks to Taylor Walker at Adelaide pre-season training. Picture: Sarah Reed

In 2010 Storm was paralysed by the salary cap scandal. It could have ended everything.

But instead, Melbourne picked itself up off the canvas, surged to a preliminary final in 2011, then backed that up with a stunning Grand Final win in 2012. There was another preliminary final in 2015, then a Grand Final loss last year.

Bellamy’s men have continued to thrive, and now sit 80 minutes away from a seventh Grand Final in 11 years, and a third since the tumult of 2010.

In July 2015, midway through his first season as Adelaide coach, six months after he brought his trio of leaders to Melbourne, Walsh was tragically, stunningly killed.

It left the football world, and particularly the Crows, numb.

But, emboldened by a desire to finish what Walsh started, and lead remarkably by Walker, the Crows made the finals that year.

The next year, under Don Pyke, Adelaide surged to September again, and now, in 2017, they sit on the verge of that elusive premiership victory.

Having the capacity to handle such abject despair, and then rise again, is borne out of an unbreakable culture, a culture developed and then kept alive by each club’s leaders.

Adelaide Crows captain Taylor Walker after being named 2017 Captain of the Year.

Storm has that in Smith and Slater and Cronk and Bellamy.

Adelaide has Walker, a captain given responsibility out of the blue by Walsh, and one who has thrived as the man his teammates look to.

Pyke’s role in driving that cultural standard cannon be understated either.

Ponissi was moved to re-tell the story of the Adelaide party’s visit to Melbourne after seeing Walker named the AFL Players’ Association Captain of the Year, for the second straight season last week.

“Even in that first year under Walshy you could see them develop as a team and the things you can’t see but can only imagine what that team went through in 2015, the manner that they stayed together spoke volumes of their culture and environment which they had created,” Ponissi said.

“They could have fallen apart. But those building blocks were set in early, and it’s a credit to those leaders, and the current coach, who have carried them top where they are.

“I think of Walshy more than every now and again, and then when I saw Tex get the AFLPA award the other night, I remembered that day, and I thought it was a legacy Phil had created.

“To get three young blokes and himself on a plane, they would have had to leave so early in the morning, to spend a whole day watching a rival code. But he had his reasons why he wanted to bring them.

“With Tex, watching him develop … Walshy clearly saw something that no-one else did. And it’s credit to him as a player and a captain to do that, to continue on that path Walshy set him on.”