Missing the finals is the wake-up call Adelaide needed

Who are you talking to Toady? How did you form your opinion? Are you just running with the sheep? I have faith that Adelaide is reviewing its 2018 performance and will react accordingly, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They did win 12 games, which is poor for them given their 2017 year, but hardly a sackable first offence for Pyke or Tex Walker. They do have a PR issue that could be fixed (but won't be as long as a certain journo is making all of the questions up and controlling the narrative). A full preseason will be a good start for 2019 and will improve their fitness levels (and hopefully their injury count).

Are Adelaide's performance problems linked to the author getting the Richmond results incorrect? Does it really matter how many games of experience the Crow's lost compared to any other club? The issue of how many chances a coach at another club gets is an externality for the Crows. But, they might choose to look closely at how Collingwood and Richmond managed the issues of team under performance, but that is really no secret. Both clubs decided they needed to exactly know the question before launching head long in to actions.

Its one thing to have a wake up call and another to get out of bed. There is no point for the Crows (or anyone else who has a problem) rushing around looking for solutions to a situation until they have clearly identified the problem. At the moment, I do nor see any sign that there is any really understanding at the Crows of where the club is failing. Anyone can see the current season results, but before you can apply the answer, you need to know the question!

G’day Peter. The article couldn’t even get the ledger against Richmond right so I think the author needs to reload and try again. Way too much is being made of the camp - not a great idea but neither were the hot coals on bare feet all those years ago. Tex has been down all year but has been struggling with injury (there is much more to his form slump than the mental aspect). Jenkins has been ok but really needs Tex to be playing and firing so he can distract the number 1 defender. The loss of Cameron hurts but Gibbs is more than adequate compensation. Was never worried about losing Lever and my predication was (unfortunately) correct if further knee injury trouble. Smith has shown his class in just a few games back and will make a massive difference next year. Half way through the year I would argue that Adelaide had lost more games to injury from their top ten than the pies. The Crows have been a bit unlucky but haven’t helped themselves either. The season is very even and if the Crows has bested Freo away as they should have and Melbourne at home then they would be looking at or around top 4 again. Why should Pyke be on notice when Hardwick and Buckley were given so many chances? And now next year we get an easier draw! And hopefully that lad from Henley High refuses to play anywhere else ;)

And that was a week after they got beaten by Essendon at Etihad Stadium.

What a ridiculous article. No insights, no discussion, no facts, nothing new. Not even a good read.

Where's all the Crows fans defending/explaining/excusing their side's performance in 2018?

It would be good to see Sloane as captain telling Mr ego Tex what to do , that alone will be worth the admission . I hope Sloane gets the gig just to see that happen. its a team effort and walker needs to understand he isn't more important than the team.

getting rid of walker as captain would be a step in the right direction. This guy's ego is out of control & there's not much oxygen up there where he is.

From what I read or heard alot of boys drowned their sorrows a bit to much and their returning fitness was quite poor at pre season and after Xmas. To good to stay down and will probably be a top 4 team next season.

AD, the buck does stop with Pyke though. He needs to be a strong enough leader to reject anything he feels is detrimental to the group. We have seen with James Hird at Essendon what happens if you put too much trust in those around you with experimental ideas.

Let's see how optimistic the Crows are when Eddie Betts takes his revenge for that camp and leaves at the end of the year.

If you wanted to write a textbook about how not to do a preseason, the Crows 2018 preseason alone would provide all the material you needed. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Delaying players' surgery in the vain hope that they'd come good resulting in them missing huge swathes of training. Some kind of ill-advised hamstring "strengthening"program in a squad that didn't have a particularly bad problem with hamstrings before, but did afterwards. The mind-training camp that appeared to completely and utterly mess up the minds of a group of players that, up to that point, had displayed extraordinary mental fortitude to make finals (including a grand final) every season in the wake of the death of Phil Walsh and the departure of a number of high profile players. It's as though somebody looked at the club, identified the things that were working pretty well and then carefully developed a plan to systematically roger up each and every one of those things. Although the coach needs to take some of the blame for this, I'd be looking more at the football department around him. In particular football manager Brett Burton and "high performance manger" Brett Hass. I'd also be looking at the assistant coaches around Pyke - some of those guys have been around the club since Neil Craig's tenure. Time to clear some of them out and bring in some new voices and fresh ideas.

Losing to Richmond twice Michael? My recollection is that the Crows thrashed Richmond by 36 points in round two. And if you believe that Sloane will replace Walker as captain, you’d probably buy Nigerian lottery tickets.

The Crows seemed to have some rather strange outlier behaviour stemming from the weird wide pre-stance stare at anthems last finals including the absurdity of Don Pyke doing the stance right through to what seemed a disastrous motivational camp. The fact is the Crows haven't coped with injury like the Cats, GWS and Pies have. Injuries or not it's a big drop from the GF to missing the finals and questions need to be asked. Although Pyke got them to the GF last year, I'm not convinced by his people management skills and think he will be on notice in 2019 along with Ken Hinkley who has underachieved with the Port list.