Portology
Premium Platinum
Veteran
10k Posts
Port Adelaide - Allir Allir Player Sponsor 2021
Port Adelaide - Kane Farrell Player Sponsor 2021
Port Adelaide - Connor Rozee Player Sponsor 2020
Port Adelaide - Zak Butters 2019 Player Sponsor
Port Adelaide - Jack Watts Player Sponsor 2018
Port Adelaide - Jesse Palmer Player Sponsor 2017
Probably! Like us, the Cows can't afford WB- or StK- style "rebuild" years even with the improved AO stadium deal. The "thermonuclear" threat of us making Adelaide a 50/50 town after the one-off distortion of the double Bradbury flags was probably the straw that broke the Crow's back.
It's like '96, the last time hype gave in to desperation at West Lakes, but in the opposite direction. In '96 overinflated egos and under-performing "stars" got cut, a new coach swept all before him... yet 3 years later "the culture" resurfaced and a double-premiership coach walks. For the 3rd time since Blight walked, another Crows coach with public speaking challenges is sacrificed to a playing group. This time not just because "he lost the players" but because, first, the Tippett scheme blew up, costing them picks needed (in their minds) to avoid a future rebuild, then, panicking in the face of sanctions they trade a player popular with the group, so now they dare not "lose the players" again, literally, in the new world of free agency. Their last desperate hope is that Paddy, Tex & Sloane stay and hold a motley group up to protect attendances and the corporate $. To support that they need local media to keep pumping the "Crows A Real Flag Threat" infection into the air as they've been doing each year since the first Bradbury flag. Lose any of them, slide far enough for long enough and the local media will finally turn, especially if we keep flying for a few years and they figure out it has become a 50/50 town.
Sidebar: I've always thought one wellspring of some of the bizarre choices of the "Late Choco Era" was that word-that-must-not-be-said: "rebuilding". Do anything, try anything tactically, trade for a "X-factor", double or nothing on your bets in the football sense, just don't say "rebuilding" because "The Deal" means we barely make money at AAMI even when we're at the top so we can't even think about... no don't say it. Recall the very public rebukes after he called a season over several rounds from the end one year? In 2011-2012 we saw the cost of a too-long delayed rebuild without the right people/without sufficient resources in place. We've seen it can turn around unbelievably quickly by good people with enough to work with but if the culture of the playing group or the club has toxic elements in most cases you get a short lived West Coast or Essendon type rise then fall. Culture.
Speaking of culture, and immediate sackings: anyone else think it really odd that Sando nominated "Talia's cat vomiting" as the highlight of the season just a few days before being sacked? A truly bizarre comment and if I was a shrink I'd suggest he's thinking of something else that he can't talk about...
