Opinion Non-Crows AFL 9

[Mostyn]

We can never really know but I always thought we believed it would turn quickly, even in the darkest depths we never really believed we belonged there and a turnaround was imminent.

Like in the next week or two imminent

That we thought for years we were never more than a couple of weeks from turning the corner

And i for one, certainly don’t take for granted or assume were out of the woods just yet

That may be true. It may be what they hoped.

I guess the question is - were they surprised by what actually occurred? Do they regret anything?

 

[Sanders]

I didn't say hard reset.

I didn't say we felt we were going to finish last.

I said rebuild. We changed a lot that off season - our executive staff, our coaching team, our age make-up, a lot of senior players.

At the time, many felt we were rebuilding. Many felt we should be doing even more. I don't think anyone thought we were reloading for another run.

Where did you think the club felt they'd finish in 2019? How about 2020?

I reckon they thought they were a top 4 chance coming into 2019, and I reckon by 2020 they knew they weren't a remote finals chance, and that wasn't their priority.

Huh?

We thought we were still in vicinity of our window, fix the culture and bounce right back

We were contending for finals in 2019 and I think, and thought at the time, we were hoping for a Sando spike.

Why do you think we were chasing Grundy so hard?

We don’t hire Nicks at all, if we have the first inclination any of what happened was even vaguely possible

What McCrae did with Collingwood was closer to what we expected. We blamed Pyke and wanted to lance the boil.

At no stage did we ever do anything to show we embraced the full rebuild. And never really did afterwards either

 

[Sanders]

Look, that's just completely untrue. We obviously had zero interest in keeping them, and offered them the minimum required to retain their rights.

OK Vader.

This minimum stuff is pure fantasy and make believe. The preposition “obviously” doesn’t impute magical fact changing powers

They very much wanted to stay and it would have been incredibly easy to do that.

They wanted to stay for longer deals, sure.

What happened is what happened. There's no reason to think it wasn't exactly what we wanted to happen, because of how easy it would have been for us to do something different if we wanted.

Huh?

 

[Sanders]

I guess the question is - were they surprised by what actually occurred? Do they regret anything?

I hope they regret it all.

And if things go south, their inability to commit one way or the other will be the defining epitaph of this era

The arrogant complacency that got us into that mess, just assuming we are smarter than everyone else seems to have a whiff on the wind again. Assuming the rebuild is over and we will just take our rightful place back contending and we’ll never need to worry again.

I hope that’s my imagination

 

[George Kramer]

Huh?

We thought we were still in vicinity of our window, fix the culture and bounce right back

We were contending for finals in 2019 and I think, and thought at the time, we were hoping for a Sando spike.

Why do you think we were chasing Grundy so hard?

We don’t hire Nicks at all, if we have the first inclination any of what happened was even vaguely possible

What McCrae did with Collingwood was closer to what we expected. We blamed Pyke and wanted to lance the boil.

At no stage did we ever do anything to show we embraced the full rebuild. And never really did afterwards either

When this whole discussion started a few weeks ago, it was around when we appointed Nicks did we expect the changes we had made would see us bottom out versus Nicks and the club being bullish we could hold ground and rebuild.

It was clearly the latter, Roo said it.

Jenkins, Douglas, Otten and Jacobs didn’t play much footy that year. Effectively first choice players we let go were Betts, Keith and Greenwood. That’s hardly a full blown rebuild.

Some like to hide behind this turnover to excuse Nicks coaching that year. As it turned out it was a blessing as we got better picks.

 

[GreyCrow]

I left here for a short time. It followed people on here making direct comments about who I was in real life, and I found that creepy

You were the one who revealed your role - nobody else

 

[Sanders]

I think Grundy is the smoking gun to all these fantasy theories that we knew we were rebuilding

We had a full salary cap, and between ejecting bad culture guys and freeing up some cap room we thought Grundy was the missing piece

Heck, Buckley himself says he thought we had him

Rebuilding teams don’t offer multi million dollar deals to missing pieces

Excise the cancers, get a star in, and get right back amongst it

That was the plan

 

[Sanders]

When this whole discussion started a few weeks ago, it was around when we appointed Nicks did we expect the changes we had made would see us bottom out versus Nicks and the club being bullish we could hold ground and rebuild.

It was clearly the latter, Roo said it.

Jenkins, Douglas, Otten and Jacobs didn’t play much footy that year. Effectively first choice players we let go were Betts, Keith and Greenwood. That’s hardly a full blown rebuild.

Some like to hide behind this turnover to excuse Nicks coaching that year. As it turned out it was a blessing as we got better picks.

The blessing was Grundy changing his mind

 

[Sanders]

I mean a team that finished 11th

With the backbone of a grand final team intact

Addition by subtraction culture wise

Recruit a superstar ruckman on mega money

We absolutely expected to make finals and be right back amongst it

Quite F’ing obviously

 

[Scorpus]

We can never really know but I always thought we believed it would turn quickly, even in the darkest depths we never really believed we belonged there and a turnaround was imminent.

Like in the next week or two imminent

That we thought for years we were never more than a couple of weeks from turning the corner

And i for one, certainly don’t take for granted or assume were out of the woods just yet

The wake up call that our list was internally overrated should have been when Brad Crouch didn't get enough interest on the open market for even band 2 free agency compensation

We were absolutely sure we'd get a huge return for him and didn't. It's been proven now that St Kilda paid fair value.

A lot of other players we rated highly during the Pyke era also went on to do absolutely nothing outside the club. Such as Atkins and Kelly.

We thought the list was better than it really was which is why we thought it wouldn't be a long time back to finals. They were dragged into a deep rebuild because it took too long to realise that. And Nicks would have been hired based on similar thinking, that our list was reasonable. When he got here he realised guys like Crouch and Gibbs weren't that good.

 

[Sanders]

The wake up call that our list was internally overrated should have been when Brad Crouch didn't get enough interest on the open market for even band 2 free agency compensation

We were absolutely sure we'd get a huge return for him and didn't. It's been proven now that St Kilda paid fair value.

A lot of other players we rated highly during the Pyke era also went on to do absolutely nothing outside the club. Such as Atkins and Kelly.

We thought the list was better than it really was which is why we thought it wouldn't be a long time back to finals. They were dragged into a deep rebuild because it took too long to realise that. And Nicks would have been hired based on similar thinking, that our list was reasonable. When he got here he realised guys like Crouch and Gibbs weren't that good.

I don’t think there was ever a moment where we believed or accepted that we were 3,4,5 years away. Not in 2020, 21,22 etc

And certainly not in 2024

Like a gambler always believes it’s turning we were always one hand away

 

[Scorpus]

I don’t think there was ever a moment where we believed or accepted that we were 3,4,5 years away. Not in 2020, 21,22 etc

And certainly not in 2024

Like a gambler always believes it’s turning we were always one hand away

Just shows they didn't do their research, especially after we finished bottom 4 twice in a row.

Clubs don't quickly come back from that, and if they do it's an extreme outlier. At that point they should have known they wouldn't be back in flag contention until the late 2020s

 

[Mostyn]

Huh?

We thought we were still in vicinity of our window, fix the culture and bounce right back

We were contending for finals in 2019 and I think, and thought at the time, we were hoping for a Sando spike.

Why do you think we were chasing Grundy so hard?

We don’t hire Nicks at all, if we have the first inclination any of what happened was even vaguely possible

What McCrae did with Collingwood was closer to what we expected. We blamed Pyke and wanted to lance the boil.

At no stage did we ever do anything to show we embraced the full rebuild. And never really did afterwards either

We didn't think we were in the vicinity of our window. I just can't agree with that.

We did at the start of 2019. When we bombed out so drastically, we consciously started a rebuild.

We sacked our coach and some assistant coaches, we moved on our Chairman and head of performance, we moved on seven senior players, we turned out list from 3rd oldest to 3rd youngest.

We probably thought it was a temporary dip and we could build back quickly. We realised within a few months that wasn't true.

Why did we approach Grundy? There's not many top level SA players you can acquire for free at 25 - same motivation for WCE getting English, if they look to do that. It's probably also evidence we thought this was a 3 year rebuild, not six.

That's what I believe. Obviously others do not.

 

[Mostyn]

I think Grundy is the smoking gun to all these fantasy theories that we knew we were rebuilding

We had a full salary cap, and between ejecting bad culture guys and freeing up some cap room we thought Grundy was the missing piece

Heck, Buckley himself says he thought we had him

Rebuilding teams don’t offer multi million dollar deals to missing pieces

Excise the cancers, get a star in, and get right back amongst it

That was the plan

You going to say the same thing if WCE target English?

Grundy was 25. The clubs trying to sign him thought he had 7 years left at a top level, and he wasn't costing any draft capital at all.

I'm glad we didn't get him.

 

[Mostyn]

Just shows they didn't do their research, especially after we finished bottom 4 twice in a row.

Clubs don't quickly come back from that, and if they do it's an extreme outlier. At that point they should have known they wouldn't be back in flag contention until the late 2020s

In your wrap up of the Crows 2019 off season, you clearly refer to us as rebuilding, though you wished we had cut deeper.

Interestingly, you say it set us up to rebuild further the following year.

 

[Sanders]

You going to say the same thing if WCE target English?

Grundy was 25. The clubs trying to sign him thought he had 7 years left at a tip level, and he wasn't costing any draft capital at all.

I'm glad we didn't get him.

WCE targeted Tim Kelly to extend their window

They’re in the mess they’re in because they couldn’t read the tea leaves

They also had an abomination of an injury run last year, and were trying to trade next years first rounder. It’s pretty obvious they think they’re about to turn it around

If we’d just recruited a Harley Reid I’d be bullish too

 

[Mr_Moogle]

The arrogant complacency that got us into that mess, just assuming we are smarter than everyone else seems to have a whiff on the wind again.

This a reference to signing Nicks before the season starts?

 

[Scorpus]

In your wrap up of the Crows 2019 off season, you clearly refer to us as rebuilding, though you wished we had cut deeper.

Interestingly, you say it set us up to rebuild further the following year.

Because I knew we were cooked and had to rebuild

Did the club truly know that at the time?

 

[ABAB]

I’m not sure we ever really made a turn for the hard rebuild. It happened to us, but not by choice.

My sense is that we couldn’t stop the free fall.

We tried, for years, and couldn’t do it

“Matty Nicks knew what he was in for when he was coming. We were very clear that we wanted to do a rebuild, and an aggressive rebuild at that, we knew we had to move on a few of our older players and try some of our younger players that haven’t been exposed to AFL football in the last two years,” Ricciuto said.

Mark Ricciuto will ‘go if he needs to’ but backs ‘aggressive rebuild’ as Adelaide’s only option

Ricciuto will ‘go if he needs to’ but backs ‘aggressive rebuild’ as Adelaide’s only option

www.foxsports.com.au

 

[Geoffa32]

I think seeing the end of his career had something to do with it. He went into 2021 thinking it was his final year in the game.

That too.


But having Burgess instead of Brett Burton heading up that department lead to better results.




On SM-A325F using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Mostyn]

You were the one who revealed your role - nobody else

I said I ran an organisation, and posted a reply to a tweet I had made.

People used that to look up who I was online - which I guess I was asking for but it felt really creepy and unsettling at the time.

 

[Mostyn]

Because I knew we were cooked and had to rebuild

Did the club truly know that at the time?

I don't know - you seemed to identify that the rebuild had started and would continue, though you seemed to think it should have been deeper cuts at the time.

 

[Mostyn]

WCE targeted Tim Kelly to extend their window

They’re in the mess they’re in because they couldn’t read the tea leaves

They also had an abomination of an injury run last year, and were trying to trade next years first rounder. It’s pretty obvious they think they’re about to turn it around

If we’d just recruited a Harley Reid I’d be bullish too

Interesting - so you feel that both you and WCE think this will be a very swift turnaround?

I'd be curious what those who are closer to that club would think.

 

[119others]

We didn't think we were in the vicinity of our window. I just can't agree with that.

We did at the start of 2019. When we bombed out so drastically, we consciously started a rebuild.

We sacked our coach and some assistant coaches, we moved on our Chairman and head of performance, we moved on seven senior players, we turned out list from 3rd oldest to 3rd youngest.

We probably thought it was a temporary dip and we could build back quickly. We realised within a few months that wasn't true.

Why did we approach Grundy? There's not many top level SA players you can acquire for free at 25 - same motivation for WCE getting English, if they look to do that. It's probably also evidence we thought this was a 3 year rebuild, not six.

That's what I believe. Obviously others do not.

agree with all this - especially going from 3rd oldest to 3rd youngest. How in the hell can that not be interpreted as going the hard rebuild? - except complete rebuilds can never be done in 3 years. Assuming we continue moving up (5-7 this year) we are basically on track for the perfectly templated rebuild.

Mark Ricciuto will ‘go if he needs to’ but backs ‘aggressive rebuild’ as Adelaide’s only option

Ricciuto will ‘go if he needs to’ but backs ‘aggressive rebuild’ as Adelaide’s only option

www.foxsports.com.au

“I’m not gonna jump ship now, I’m here to take us through the lows which we are now and maybe next year as well, and then as we come out of that with more money in our salary cap we can start approaching players (DAWSON, RANKINE, LAST YEAR DAY, REDMAN and other A Grade misses) and get some extra games into these kids, we’ll come out of it just fine on the other side.


“We’ll probably look back and think ‘gee, that was a rough couple of years at the footy club’, but I’m confident we’ve got the right plan at the footy club and the right people in place.

“We’ll keep improving, we’ll keep trying to bring new people (BURGESS, BURNS, VB, RAHILLY,) in to better our football department ...

Adelaide has handed debuts to eight players this season and used a total of 37 players, the most in the AFL along with Sydney and the Western Bulldogs.

“Matty Nicks knew what he was in for when he was coming. We were very clear that we wanted to do a rebuild, and an aggressive rebuild at that, we knew we had to move on a few of our older players and try some of our younger players that haven’t been exposed to AFL football in the last two years,” Ricciuto said.

 

[119others]

Just shows they didn't do their research, especially after we finished bottom 4 twice in a row.

Clubs don't quickly come back from that, and if they do it's an extreme outlier. At that point they should have known they wouldn't be back in flag contention until the late 2020s

you seriously dont think we are going to be in contention for the flag during the next 2-3 years?