Adelaide leaves the MCG after its defeat at the hands of Carlton, its fourth loss in five games. Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Like they do in most losses, the raw statistics didn’t look good for Adelaide in its 27-point loss to Carlton at the MCG on Saturday.
The Crows kicked just nine goals, and a total of 60 points, managing just five marks inside 50 for the whole game compared to Carlton’s 16. They were smashed in both clearance numbers and contested ball, down 23 in stoppages to the Blues and beaten by 22 in contested ball, both categories generally a good indicator of effort.
But perhaps the most telling statistic was this. That no fewer than 16 players in Adelaide’s line-up were also part of the Crows’ 2017 grand final team. And of the six who played that day who didn’t front up against the Blues, four are still on Adelaide’s senior list.
The Crows’ demise from the team which went into that 2017 grand final against Richmond a warmish favourite has been stark. Of 40 games since, they’ve won 21, just over half.
They remain in the top eight this season precariously, but with games to come against an improved St Kilda, West Coast (away), Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs, are every chance to miss finals for a second season in a row.
Last year was derailed by injuries and a disastrous pre-season training camp which got players off-side and continued to bubble away as a source of resentment. But in 2019, there’s been a lot fewer potential explanations.
As usually happens when a team loses form dramatically, much of the current finger-pointing is aimed squarely at coach Don Pyke, who was signed to a three-year contract extension a few months after that 2017 campaign.
The coach is always the easiest target. But any miscalculations Pyke may have made since 2017 are overshadowed by the extent to which the key players of Adelaide’s tilt at a premiership two years ago have dropped their bundles.
A coach can help shape a list, institute an effective game plan, and forge a positive, encouraging atmosphere around a team. But ultimately, can he really be responsible for the extent to which his players are prepared to bust a boiler to get the results? And frankly, inconsistency of effort seems to be the Crows’ trademark these days.
Adelaide was a free-scoring team in 2017, which averaged nearly 110 points per game. But much of that attacking potency came off the back of a pressure game which created turnovers.
Two years ago, the Crows were miles ahead of the rest of the AFL for scores from turnovers, at an average 71.3 points per game. They’re currently ranked 10th with an average of just 46.2 points.
Little wonder, then, that the highest-scoring team in the competition has become only the ninth-most prolific, Adelaide currently going at 81.6 points per game, just shy of five fewer goals per game than they were scoring in 2017.
Because it’s not just about kicking goals, it’s about creating the opportunities to kick goals, and in terms of locking the ball in the scoring zone with pressure, Adelaide’s intensity is a shadow of what it was. Ditto around the ground, where the contested ball ranking has slipped from third two years ago to seventh.
The Crows’ on-field leaders have simply as a group failed to measure up since 2017. This year, captain Taylor Walker was handed an official co-captain to support him in Rory Sloane. Both have struggled to reach anywhere near the heights they were at a couple of seasons ago.
The other members of the official leadership group are Tom Lynch, Matt Crouch, Daniel Talia, Richard Douglas and Josh Jenkins. Douglas is currently in the reserves, Jenkins was dropped earlier in the season, and Talia and Crouch are having only a fraction of the impact they did.
The Crows’ SANFL reserves team at the weekend featured Douglas, Eddie Betts, out-of-favour ruckman Sam Jacobs and high-profile recruit Bryce Gibbs. That’s some quartet to have playing state league football, and with all four comfortably over the age 30, also a pointer to Adelaide’s impending list problems.
But while Adelaide did lose two pivotal members of its 2017 group in intercept defender Jake Lever and small forward Charlie Cameron, it also rightly counted upon a next generation of leaders stepping up to the plate.
The biggest positives to have emerged on-field over the last two seasons have been players who have quickly risen to occupy important roles but of whom too much has also been expected given their lack of experience.
It happened last year with Tom Doedee, who had to take over Lever’s role. And it’s happening again in 2019 in the likes of Alex Keath and raw ruckman Reilly O’Brien.
Rory Atkins, Luke Brown, Hugh Greenwood, Jake Kelly, Riley Knight and Paul Seedsman were all part of that 2017 grand final team. Nearly two full seasons on, have any continued to develop to the point they guide the team’s fortunes as much as the old hands? You’d have to argue not.
The team Adelaide fielded against Carlton last Saturday had, collectively, 359 games more experience, about 16 games more per player. It had 11 100-games-plus players, the Blues had just six.
Yet when the Crows kicked a couple of quick goals in the final term to give themselves at least some sort of winning chance, it was Carlton which steadied the ship and kicked again to go away to a comfortable victory.
No Adelaide player seemed intent to seize the moment, and upon the Blues’ inexperience, to get their team over the line, instead just drifting to another defeat. It’s been a recurring theme this season, a fourth second half fade-out since round 10, and coming only a week after the Crows’ surrendered a five-goal lead at home against Essendon.
Pyke can perhaps be criticised for some conservatism at the selection table (though he did drop Betts last week), and to an extent for some bigger-picture issues like the training camp and on-going list management.
But the group he had playing such wonderful football in 2017 has fallen away far quicker than anyone might have anticipated or can rightfully have expected.
Rather than grit their teeth and resolve to turn that missed opportunity into real rewards with a list plainly good enough to do that, too many senior Adelaide players have lacked the will to go one step further, and the longer time goes on, seem meekly resigned to their fate as “coodabeens”.
And that failure has to rest squarely on their own shoulders, not those of their coach.
*This article first appeared at SPORTING NEWS.
