How Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks is staying upbeat despite Crows’ terrible 0-10 win-loss record this season
If Matthew Nicks is feeling the pressure then he is certainly not showing it. Reece Homfray reveals how the Crows’ main man has remained so measured, as Brodie Smith explains how his coach is striking the right balance.
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If Matthew Nicks’ patience is wearing thin or the pressure of a 0-10 start is getting to him, then he is not showing it. And he is certainly not saying it.
As the Crows search for their first win of the year and the first of Nicks’ coaching career, he has faced the same line of questioning for nine straight weeks.
What’s wrong with the team? Why aren’t you winning? Where’s Bryce Gibbs? Why aren’t you always getting close? When you do, why can’t you finish the job? What’s wrong with Tex? Why aren’t you running games out?
Former coaches have asked questions publicly as well.
Malcolm Blight has been critical of Nicks’ game plan and Graham Cornes of his body language, and some frustrated fans don’t agree that a full-blown rebuild should also mean a winless season which is looking frighteningly more likely with every week of a 17-round fixture.
But asked the how, the why, and what’s next, Nicks has not hidden his disappointment but he is yet to snap.
He is yet to turn the question back on a reporter as if to say ‘well what would you do?’, he hasn’t thrown his players or his list – which was described as like taking a “plastic knife to a gunfight” on the weekend – under the bus and nor has he referenced any perceived lack of support around him in what is an undermanned coaching box.
And he has always tried to find a positive no matter how dire the situation has seemed.
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When he was appointed Crows coach in October, Nicks was charged with rebuilding a list and a culture that was supposedly broken after two painful years on and off the field.
And it was largely because he had been there before – as a player and an assistant coach.
Sydney had gone 8-55 in the three years before Nicks was drafted in 1994 and they made a grand final within two years as they built the famed ‘Bloods culture’.
He was at Port Adelaide as an assistant when Matthew Primus was shown the door and the Power was on its knees, then sat next to Ken Hinkley for the next six years of that club’s resurgence.
So Nicks should know what a rebuild looks like and right now he may be calling on every bit of that knowledge and experience to get him and the team through a horror first year, which continues with Collingwood on Tuesday night.
At training at Footy Park on Monday morning, the players were in full flight with their line and development coaches when he set foot on the ground about 10.30am.
Nicks picked up a footy and kicked to himself, then moved from group to group, watching and speaking to players and coaches, spending time with Brad Crouch who was running on the boundary line, with football manager Adam Kelly and high performance boss Matt Hass, before picking up the plastic cones as the players left the oval.
Now the footy world has come to terms with just how far back in the pecking order Adelaide is, the questions to Nicks have more recently turned to ‘how are you coping?’.
“It’s hard, it’s tough because I want to get a win for the boys, I want them to get some reward for the effort they’re putting out there,” he said on Monday.
“For the development we’re seeing in our group, you just want that outcome but you can’t live in outcomes, you’ve got to live in the process and we’re in that at the moment.
“As a coach, ultimately I want to see our guys celebrate after a game and sing the club song, it would be great for everyone involved because we have staff that are working hard, everyone is working overtime at the moment because of the environment, some of the (COVID) protocols we’re under, it’s a tough time for everyone but we’re sticking tight.”
But are you feeling the pressure?
“No. I’d love to get wins for our supporters, I’d love to get wins for our players,” he said.
“But it’s not about win and loss at this point, it’s about making sure we keep improving.”
Inaugural Crows coach Graham Cornes was critical of Nicks’ body language after he was seen patting players on the back following the narrow loss to Essendon at home in Round 8.
The next week he didn’t hold back giving it to his troops at quarter-time of their loss to North Melbourne.
“It’s an interesting one that, I wouldn’t say I’m a carrot coach, I have my moments with the stick, you’d have to ask the players how I balance that out,” Nicks said post-match.
“Quarter-time was the stick, I just felt we needed it at the time, we needed to spark ourselves.
“I’m never going to get angry with a player, we will talk, it’s never the intention of a player to go out and underperform, it’s never an intention for a player to go out and not play for the team, it’s about education, working with these guys on making them better footballers.
“A tap on the bum at the end of the game that ‘it’s all right bud, we’re sticking tight, we’re not going to drop off each other and get angry at each other, we’re going to find a way to get better’.”
Brodie Smith told The Lowdown Podcast this week that in his opinion, Nicks had the right balance between arm around and giving it to them.
“No doubt it’s tough at the moment and the last couple of years have been really tough at the footy club,” Smith said.
“And I think we needed Mr Nice Guy to come in and bring us all back together, and start enjoying going to the footy club and working hard, and that’s definitely what we’ve got back this year.”
“At 0-10 when you come off after the game, we know our last quarter (against Melbourne) was far from the level, it wasn’t good enough.
“We’re not enjoying that we’re not winning, but if the coach starts spraying you and saying how bad you were, that’s not going to help anyone.
“I’m not sure what Graham (Cornes) wants him to do there, Nicksy is getting around his players after a tough loss and then during the week we review it.
“He’s definitely not patting us on the back when we do the reviews, it’s ‘sit down and this isn’t good enough’, we look at what went wrong and why, and look at the areas we did so well in the first half.
“He’s not Mr Nice Guy all the time, he does get stuck into us when he has to, he’s got that balance right.
“He’s come into the club, brought us back together and when we don’t perform he lets us know like any coach would.
“It’s frustrating for all of us and we’re all in it together, he doesn’t need to be giving us a spray as we walk in because we are all trying to fix it, and he’s doing a terrific job given the circumstances.”
Despite losing their past two games by a combined 120 points after a final-quarter fade out against Melbourne last Wednesday, Nicks said the mood after the soul searching in the game review remained good.
“24-48 hours after the game there’s a real disappointment in the way we finished … but I think the boys were proud of the way they went about it for three quarters,” he said.
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“That’s not enough, we know that, we reviewed in detail and went through what’s going to get us that four-quarter effort, why didn’t it come?
“There are small margins in this game, small margins, and their midfield got on top of us and we spent time in the back half.
“So we know what it is that we’ve got to bring and (ask ourselves) ‘can we do it for longer?’
“The vibe this week is we got the answers we’re after and now we’ve got to put it on the park.”
That means against Collingwood at Adelaide Oval on Tuesday night.
Originally published as How Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks is staying upbeat despite Crows’ terrible 0-10 win-loss record this season
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