The Adelaide Crows this week have slumped to mid-table mediocrity after a shocking loss to the Brisbane Lions on Sunday. Rumblings are afoot at Adelaide and people are questioning the Crows to the extent that the Spanish Inquisition seems about to be restarted.
Well, perhaps not yet. But there are serious questions about when the Crows players and coaching staff are going to deliver success to the club.
1997 and 1998 is starting to feel a long time ago for a demanding fan base that has little time for failure.
So where are the Crows going wrong? It’s a question I don’t have the full answer for otherwise I would be at the club’s door. But one fallacy in their methods may be contributing to their predicament.
Neil Craig as coach is a firm believer that you don’t need to bottom out in order to regenerate as a premiership contender. Despite pressure from outside the club and the draft system, he managed to regenerate a side that missed the finals in 2004, taking them to preliminary finals in each of the next two years.
In 2008 when more players retired or left, he managed to turn them into a young team that ended one kick away from the 2009 prelim.
Despite the last 18 months being hell for the club, Craig still refuses to bottom out, and pushes his young side to become a premiership contender.
However, he is doing this at a time when the draft system is being tampered with and the quality of players available to sides finishing from ninth to twelfth are low.
It means that the regeneration cannot be backed up with quality young players, leaving the side stuck in a time warp. While Craig never uses this as an excuse, privately the staff of Adelaide will be left wondering if the regeneration of 2010 could have instead seen the club drop a few spots to pick up quality draft picks not eaten up the Suns and GWS.
Of course it’s not a foolproof answer and is open to the criticism of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
(For those who didn’t study Latin, this is a logical fallacy that translates to ‘after this, therefore because of this.’ Or, the assumption that any event following another event must have been caused by the first.
What is verifiable, though, is that over Adelaide’s history they have never had quality top-10 draft picks. Perhaps the Crows should look down before going up, as the current strategy could be the cause of the club being stuck in perpetual mid-table motion.
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A huge late moment in another thrilling Collingwood win!
How was this one missed?
Plenty of mayo on this one from the Norm Smith Medallist!
Apart from one five-goal game, GWS forward Toby Greene has only kicked six goals from the other eight games. He's traditionally had success against the Western Bulldogs.
Bayley Fritsch should become an even more important player from a structural perspective, given key forward Jacob van Rooyen will be unavailable due to concussion.
