The Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide face the same issue as the Utah Jazz, the Cleveland Browns and any professional soccer team based in an English city that isn’t London – how do you recruit young men to live in a hole of a town?
With this week being AFL trade week, the Crows have admitted that they have a problem recruiting players to the club because of the “stigma” about living in Adelaide, if that’s the right word to use for legitimate fears about being murdered by a bunch of homicidal maniac degenerates who assume your identity and claim your pension.
This year, as with the last 18 seasons, trade week looks like being a non-event for the Crows who haven’t even been mentioned as a trade destination for any hot properties seeking to avoid the police, Centrelink or a good night out.
As Adelaide recruiting manager Matt Rendell put it, “there’s just a stigma about Adelaide in this business and we have to get over that. Once the players get here, they love it – it’s just a matter of getting their heads around the idea of going to Adelaide.”
In recent seasons the Crows, despite possessing enormous off-field wealth, first-class training facilities and a large and passionate supporter base, have had no luck in recruiting former South Australians back to the club such as Matthew Pavlich, Brad Ottens and Scott Camporeale.
Although not recruiting Camporeale could be considered a stroke of could luck in Best Clubman’s less than humble opinion.
Rendell whined that “if you want to look through our trade choices over the last 18 years – we just can’t get players here,” which overlooks the fact that the last player in the AFL to sport a non-ironic mullet, the fearsome Wayne Weidemann, up and left Fish Creek in country Victoria, population 726, for some prime time Adelaide digs.
“Now, we can’t even get the South Australians out of Victoria back here – they don’t want to come back. They want to stay in Victoria because they love it there,” Rendell said, while bemoaning the fact that nightclubs in Adelaide shut at 9pm, The Mick Molloy Show hasn’t aired there yet, milk is still delivered by the milkman and not sold in supermarkets, and the cargo pants craze that hit the eastern seaboard in 1999 shows no signs of an imminent arrival in the city of churches.
Looking at the positives, Rendell noted that recruiting kids from country Victoria is easier than attracting talent from Melbourne given the litany of things to do in the city compared to the country.
“The easy bit is getting the kids across from country Victoria because Adelaide is the next progression from their country town and a lot of those country kids are actually intimidated by Melbourne because it’s too big,” he said.
Having spent some time in country Victoria, Best Clubman is in a good position to see that the only country Victorian lads who would be excited to move to Adelaide are the sort of guys who find the prospect of the train ride on the Ghan over the border tantamount to a trip to Disneyland.
Rendell raises a valid point: if attracting young males to Adelaide is difficult, what’s going to happen if Tasmania get a side?
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