Adelaide club legend and football director Mark Ricciuto’s explosive comments on the Crows’ ‘garbage’ start to the 2022 season have been condemned by a host of former greats.
Speaking on the Triple M Breakfast program in Adelaide, Ricciuto was scathing of the team’s poor skills in particular, after a 42-point loss to Collingwood in Round 2 characterised by horrid kicking.
“They can’t kick, they can’t handball, they can’t kick a goal, they’ve given away free kicks, they really can’t do anything worse,” he said.
“It’s a confidence thing, it’s not an ability thing… we saw in the third quarter against Freo how good they can play. We need more of that and less of the garbage in the other quarters.”
With the Crows facing an equally out of sorts Port Adelaide in a crunch Showdown on Friday night, it took the unusual source of Power former great Kane Cornes to jump to their defence, questioning whether Ricciuto’s comments will help or hinder the playing group.
“He’s [Ricciuto] clearly frustrated. How does that affect the players, do you reckon?” Cornes said on SEN SA Breakfast.
“It’s pretty embarrassing. If he was saying ‘look, we’re really breaking down in our team defence and the opposition have been able to cut through us too easily and we’ve been too easy to score against’.
“If he had said ‘look, we’ve just been out-muscled at the centre bounce clearances’ … but he’s not saying that. He’s saying ‘we can’t kick, we can’t handball, we can’t tackle, we can’t kick for goal, we fumble’. These are basic fundamentals of football.
“It’s pretty damning stuff: three years into a rebuild, the club’s greatest ever player and the most influential figure at the club is saying they can’t kick or handball.”
Another former great in Essendon sharpshooter Matthew Lloyd echoed Cornes’ sentiments, saying on Nine’s Footy Classified the players would be dishearted by Ricciuto’s public spray.
“They’d [the players] be pretty upset, you would’ve thought,” Lloyd said.
“I love ‘Roo’… but that is as negative as you can get.
“It was just pretty much saying ‘we’re a hopeless list’.”
Responding to Ricciuto’s comments on SEN Breakfast on Thursday morning, star Crow Matt Crouch admitted the players had ‘let ourselves down’, and conceded their form was ‘not ideal’.
“It’s obviously not great,” Crouch said of listening to the club legend’s thoughts.
“We know that we let ourselves down on the weekend with our fundamentals. We completely understand that.
“It’s not ideal – we do a lot of work in that space. I felt like Collingwood’s pressure was high and we just didn’t handle it. We understand that, we’re working through that as a group.
“Hopefully we see a response this week.”
The Crows sit 15th on the AFL ladder after two rounds.
Former coach Ross Lyon has urged the AFL to block any move from GWS to replace under-fire coach Leon Cameron with Essendon icon James Hird.
Hird rejoined AFL ranks after more than half a decade away from the league when he joined the Giants in a part-time leadership role over the summer, with speculation over a return to senior coaching at the club mounting ever since.
With the Giants 0-2 to start the year and pressure on Cameron to deliver, Lyon, who coached St Kilda and Fremantle to four grand finals without success between 2009 and 2013, says AFL approval for Hird to coach again at the highest level ‘wouldn’t be good governance’.
Former Essendon coach and superstar James Hird. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
“At the end of the day, we respect James, but what occurred is what occurred,” he said on Nine’s Footy Classified.
“There was no governance. It was an injection program, he has to have some scars.
“I don’t think you can do a part-time leadership role and then get anointed to the AFL’s expansion team that they’ve worked 10 hard years on.
“You’ve got assistant coaches like [Carlton’s Ashley] Hansen, who are doing their apprenticeships.
“I think it would be a massive call and I think it wouldn’t be good governance.”
Cameron has already laughed off suggestions Hird could replace him at the helm, telling media earlier in the year any speculation was just that.
“Does he pose a threat to my job? No,” Cameron said.
“At the end of the day, my theory is if I’ve got really good people around me and they make me a better coach or a better person, which leads on to better results, then it will help me progress in where I want to get to. So that doesn’t worry me.”
The Giants will face fellow expansion side Gold Coast on Saturday afternoon minus former captain Phil Davis, who could miss up to three months after suffering a nasty hamstring injury in their loss to Richmond.
Gun midfielder Jacob Hopper has also undergone surgery on his knee, and will be out indefinitely.
Melbourne AFLW champion Daisy Pearce is in line for her first All Australian gong since 2018, after the 2022 squad of 40 was released on Wednesday afternoon.
Pearce, one of the competition’s inaugural superstars, made the prestigious team in 2017 and 2018, before sitting out the 2019 season due to pregnancy.
But Melbourne’s outstanding 9-1 season, finishing second on the ladder after the home-and-away season, has seen Pearce nominated alongside six other teammates – Libby Birch, Tayla Hanks, Tayla Harris, Shelley Heath, Kate Hore and Lauren Pearce.
However, Dees half-back Karen Paxman, who has been named in all five previous All Australian teams, missed out on the squad.
All fourteen clubs received at least one nomination, with minor premiers Adelaide boasting the next-most nods with six.
North Melbourne captain and superstar Emma Kearney is the only player to have been named in all five previous All Australian teams bidding to make it six.
The full team will be revealed at the annual W Awards on Tuesday, April 5.
Full AFLW All Australian squad
Adelaide: Sarah Allan, Anne Hatchard, Eloise Jones, Ebony Marinoff, Erin Phillips, Ashleigh Woodland
Brisbane: Emily Bates, Greta Bodey, Natalie Grider, Orla O’Dwyer
Carlton: Kerryn Harrington, Mimi Hill, Breann Moody
Collingwood: Jaimee Lambert, Ruby Schleicher
Fremantle: Ebony Antonio, Kiara Bowers, Hayley Miller
Geelong: Amy McDonald, Maddy McMahon
Gold Coast: Tara Bohanna
GWS: Cora Staunton
Melbourne: Libby Birch, Tyla Hanks, Tayla Harris, Shelley Heath, Kate Hore, Daisy Pearce, Lauren Pearce
North Melbourne: Jasmine Garner, Emma Kearney, Ashleigh Riddell
Richmond: Katie Brennan, Monique Conti, Rebecca Miller
St Kilda: Tilly Lucas-Rodd
West Coast: Emma Swanson
Western Bulldogs: Ellie Blackburn, Kirsty Lamb, Bonnie Toogood
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