By Greg Baum
For still-winless Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks, the pandemic lifestyle has brought one incidental benefit. Though he played his footy in relative anonymity in Sydney, he grew up in Adelaide and worked for Port Adelaide for seven years after retirement, and he knows that as defeat follows defeat for the Crows, there is seething in the streets.
“But I live quite a sheltered life at the moment,” he said. “I’m not allowed out in public. I can’t go to a cafe. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t hear a lot of the noise. That’s our entire group. I’m sure if you walk down the main street of Glenelg, you’ll hear quite a bit of the criticism we don’t get, because we’re not allowed down there.”
But in all other ways, COVID-19 has been a superbug for Adelaide. Nicks understands that all clubs are toiling under restrictions and opacity, but says they could not have come at a worse time for the Crows. “As a first-year coach, if you were told you weren’t able to train throughout your first year you’d be reasonably sceptical about taking the role,” he said.
Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks. ''Fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t hear a lot of the noise.''Credit: Getty Images
Like every new coach, he came with a new plan. “There’s some theory behind it all, and we’ve done some great work in that space,” he said. “But you don’t change habits until you actually get out there and run through it over and over and over.” Minimal training has made it hard for young players to form habits, harder still for veteran to break them. “When you talk about changing a game plan, they’re finding it the hardest,” he said.
Even left field is out of bounds. “If you go old school, you’d all go and have a beer together now.” Nicks said. “You’d have an honesty session, get the truth serum in and talk it out. But that’s impossible at this point in time. There’s a lot of pressure on players to do the right thing.”
If you go old school, you’d all go and have a beer together now ... But that’s impossible at this point.
Matthew Nicks
Nicks makes it clear that he is not hiding behind being hidden. He and the club are shocked at where they find themselves. “We’re not a new side in the competition. We’re a big club,” he said. “We played in a grand final less than four years ago. We were in that window of getting there.
“Now we’re in a rebuild. But we thought we still had a really strong core of good players who would enable us to compete week in, week out. To get to 12 games in and not have a win, there’s obviously a fair of pressure.”
Within, there’s no panic. Personally, he’s not losing sleep. “But it is becoming tougher and tougher,” Nicks admitted. “The mind’s a powerful tool, and when you’re not able to quite get across the line, it gets harder every week. Now we play Geelong, probably the form side in the competition. The challenges just keep getting bigger.”
Always in the background, there’s the infamous camp three years ago. Nicks says he has thrashed it out with the remaining players and is sure there are no scars now. Rather, he wonders about residuals from losing a grand final. He was with Greater Western Sydney as they lost one last year and sees them barely clinging to the top eight now. “I think some of that sits there,” he said.
Nicks can rationalise some of the Crows’ woes. Injuries have hit them about the average rate for all clubs this year, but inopportunely. Two captains went down, and it was almost three.
Moments arose, but were not seized. “We’ve had opportunities. Small things happen in a lot of games and it changes really quickly,” he said. “A two- or three-minute period where you feel like you’ve got that opportunity and all of a sudden it’s all against you.”
Defeat compounds like interest. “Up to round eight, there was a really strong head space,” Nicks said. “We were fighting through. It does start to get tough as you get to three-quarters of the way through a season without a win to keep the group motivated. That’s our challenge.”
As if 2020 was not already bizarre enough, Amazon is embedded with the Crows this year, making a documentary. It is centred on Nicks and captain Rory Sloane. “Miked up,” he said. “Cameras in your face at meetings.”
Right now, it must feel more like searchlight than limelight, but Nicks can see how it might become a macabre best-seller. “You may not see again a team that hasn’t won 12 games in,” he said.
It has made for some laughs, a necessary antidote when the walls are closing in. “There was some media the other day, a North Melbourne player smiling and laughing, and people got upset about it,” he said. “But that’s part of the process. There’s no point moping around. You’ve got to get back up. It’s another week. So we do try to keep it reasonably light-hearted.”