Phil Walsh identified as Adelaide Crows next coach in late July

ADELAIDE chose Phil Walsh as the man to salvage its ailing football program in late July after an undercover meeting with board member Mark Ricciuto.

Essendon Ruckman Patrick Ryder

ADELAIDE chose Phil Walsh as the man to salvage its ailing football program in late July.

But while the Crows senior management agreed to make no contact with the Port Adelaide assistant coach, new board member Mark Ricciuto has confessed to running a “black ops” campaign to get Walsh to West Lakes.

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The Crows in July — Ricciuto’s first month as a board member — short-listed Walsh as a candidate to support then coach Brenton Sanderson. He was considered for the vacancy left by senior assistant coach Dean Bailey’s death by cancer in March — a role he could not have taken up while on a three-year contract to the Power.

Walsh on Tuesday — when he was appointed Adelaide’s seventh senior coach — said he met with Ricciuto in August as a referee for an applicant for the Crows chief executive job. This is understood to be Craig Vozzo who worked with Walsh in the West Coast football department.

Adelaide Football Club board member Mark Ricciuto was involved in luring Port Adelaide assistant coach Phil Walsh to the Crows. Photo Sarah Reed.

That meeting marked the moment Walsh won Ricciuto’s telling endorsement to be Adelaide’s new coach — almost a month before Sanderson was sacked with two years on his contract.

While Walsh thought he went to the meeting to endorse a potential Crows chief executive to replace Steven Trigg after he moved to Carlton, Ricciuto says his intent was to find more than a senior manager.

“I did catch up with (Walsh) to have a chat ... we were doing a lot of exploring just to find out who were the clever people out there who can turn our club around,” Ricciuto said on TripleM.

“I thought he has been to a lot of places, he knows a lot of people.

“I just caught up with him to chew the fat really.

“I spoke to him about names for the CEO; names for footy people we could get to our club.

“I thought at that interview that this bloke is pretty clever — and one thing lead to another (including Sanderson’s sacking on September 17).”

New Adelaide Crows coach Phil Walsh. PHOTO SARAH REED

Ricciuto’s meeting with Walsh was pre-empted by the Brownlow Medallist on August 4 in his TripleM breakfast program issuing a five-point critique on Sanderson. This included the damning summary Sanderson was “outcoached” against West Coast and there were issues with the “mindset” of the Crows players.

The image of Adelaide sacking Sanderson while having a preferred candidate is reinforced by Ricciuto’s comments. Some of the candidates interviewed by the Crows’ five-man search party for Sanderson’s replacement say they left their presentations feeling Adelaide had already made a choice.

Ricciuto said he left his first meeting with Walsh convinced he fitted the billing of an AFL senior coach.

“The one thing I kept hearing from everyone I spoke to about Phil Walsh was he was a genius,” Ricciuto said. “He was the best tactician that they had ever worked with — and the best tactician possibly in the whole AFL.

“That he was a real hard bloke, he knew what he wanted and he is tough on his players. He talks the way you want a coach to talk.”

Walsh said he was not approached to be a candidate for the Adelaide vacancy until the Power’s finals campaign ended with the three-point loss to Hawthorn in the preliminary final on September 20 — three days after Sanderson’s sacking.

Walsh has signed a three-year deal with Adelaide.