Adelaide Football Club’s list management team is the most maligned group in Aussie rules | Graham Cornes
At Port it’s Ken Hinkley who endures the wrath of the disenchanted and impatient supporters. At Adelaide it’s the list management team, writes Graham Cornes.
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Justin Reid was resolute.
Additionally there was a touch of defiance in his response. “Judge us from 2020 onwards”, he said.
The Crows GM of List Management and Strategy and his recruiting staff are inured to the criticism.
It’s not that they don’t hear it or they ignore it. There will always be criticism from outside football clubs. They can’t avoid it.
The AFL is the biggest sporting organisation in the country. In this new age of media coverage the broadcasting rights have never been more valuable.
More journalists cover the game than at any other time in the game’s history.
Some report the facts. Others broadcast their opinions.
But it’s not only the accredited journalists from the traditional platforms whose opinions are force fed to a ravenous football public. Anyone with a computer, a laptop and even a smartphone can broadcast their opinions these days.
No accreditation needs to be applied for, or given.
Fact-checking can be loose or non-existent. Even the libel and defamation laws seem non-existent when applied to social media platforms.
You need to have a thick skin or at least delete your social media apps to survive as an AFL list manager. And perhaps don’t listen to talkback radio.
This is particularly so in Adelaide.
At Port Adelaide it’s Ken Hinkley who endures the wrath of the disenchanted and impatient supporters. At Adelaide it’s the list management team.
Other than the umpires, I doubt there is a more maligned football group than the Adelaide Football Club’s list management team.
Reid knows there will always be criticism. “We’ve heard the noise “, he said. So how do they handle the criticism?
“It’s a matter of being consistent in decision-making and list management strategy.”
It seems to be working – from 2020 onwards at least.
This current trade period will end with Adelaide securing three targets: Alex Neal-Bullen, Isaac Cumming and James Peatling.
But it’s the draft that is finally producing. Riley Thilthorpe, Sam Berry and Luke Pedlar (who albeit continues to tease us with his potential) were drafted in 2020; Josh Rachele, Jake Soligo, Zac Taylor in 2021; Max Michalenney, Billy Dowling and Hugh Bond in 2022. Last year it was Daniel Curtin who was taken at pick six.
Getting games into the young players rather than recruit older players whose best days are behind them is the strategy.
In the short term there will be some pain but eventually they will click as a team. Not unlike the Hawthorn phenomenon that excited the AFL world in 2024.
As well as the positives from the recent drafts, Adelaide has elevated players from the rookie lists and successfully traded a couple of great players in.
Jordan Dawson was traded from Sydney in 2022, is now the captain and has won the last two club champion awards.
Izak Rankine is the most exciting Crows player we’ve seen since Eddie Betts. Ben Keays may not be the most stylish of footballers but he came to Adelaide on the rookie list and this year shared the Malcolm Blight Medal with Dawson.
Not commonly recognised also, is that he’s finished in the top three of the Crows best and fairest count in the last three seasons.
Despite the criticisms and the barbs that Adelaide is not a destination club, those three players and this year’s recruits would defy such comments.
However, it shouldn’t mask the fact that it is more difficult to get the elite players to move to Adelaide.
Sixty-seven percent of AFL footballers are drafted out of Melbourne.
They have grown up with the excitement of the big games at the MCG; they dream of playing in those marqué games. That dream is easy to sell.
Not so here in Adelaide. Our biggest games are the Showdowns but they are not always prime-time or stand-alone games into Melbourne.
Selling the dream of playing in Adelaide is definitely more difficult.
Money might get them here but the Crows have never burdened their salary cap by paying players eye-watering salaries over long-term contracts.
Although, it is true that they have lost players by not being flexible enough with 21st century contracts.
Jake Lever and Mitch McGovern would surely have stayed had Adelaide been more flexible in contract negotiations.
It is worth pointing out here, that there is another now-forgotten catastrophe that has impacted on today’s Crows list. Way back in 2012 there was a minor indiscretion that has had major consequences – even today.
Who can remember the Tippett affair?
That corporate indiscretion when the Crows guaranteed when Kurt Tippett wanted to leave they would transfer him to the club of his choice? Even put it in writing.
Of course the AFL discovered it. Massive fines and suspensions were handed out, although Tippett, whose father was influential in the deal, was only suspended for 11 weeks.
The ramifications for the Crows list management team were much greater.
They forfeited their first two picks in the 2012 draft and were penalised the first two picks in the 2013 draft.
It hurts to point out that names like Brodie Grundy, Nick Vlastuin, Jack McRae and Ollie Wines featured in that draft of 2012. 2013 was worse. Marcus Bontempelli, Patrick Cripps, Zach Merrett, Tom Barrass and James Sicily, all stars still playing today, were taken in that draft.
Those two years severely handicapped Adelaide’s list management. To judge them on results from 2020 seems a fair enough request.
But my criticism of the Crows list management has not been so much about who they draft but of who they lose.
Six players who would ultimately play in a premiership walked out on Adelaide and they seemed powerless or unwilling to keep them.
It’s been better in recent years and it’s worth pointing out they’ve done well this year. Not one player has requested a transfer away from Adelaide.
However, as positive as it’s been, it’s unlikely the recent trading and draft successes will mollify the die-hard Crows fan who has been starved of finals action for the past seven seasons.
They are demanding finals action next season.
Unfortunately, there is never any guarantee that your team can make the finals.
After the positive signs of 2023 it was assumed that the Crows would play finals in 2024.
They didn’t. The season was an abject failure.
Some want to blame the list management team but to me, the failure wasn’t so much about personnel (although, another big-bodied midfielder would help).
As discussed last week their skill level was sub-standard for an AFL team and they definitely got ahead of themselves, reading and hearing how good they were going to be.
That big-bodied midfielder must come in this year’s national draft. It is a draft heavy with midfielders.
The Crows’ pick four won’t get them the highly touted Victorian Jagga Smith who should be taken at pick one.
However, even though some experts have rated South Adelaide’s Sid Draper as high as number two, the Crows are still a chance.
If they could get him at pick four, the critics should surely ease off Reid and his list management team.
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