Why the Spin?

[Crow-mo]

We are having a shit season, for a number of reasons some of which are directly the fault of our appointed leaders, some of which are bad luck and misfortune. Fine, whatever, we are where we are.

HOWEVER, why does the club continue to feed us spin at best, outright lies at worst.

consider this latest release:

Craig laments Crows' poor fitness base

http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/95277/default.aspx

ADELAIDE coach Neil Craig has lamented the poor fitness base of his playing group after St Kilda powered to victory in the final term of Saturday night's clash.

The Crows have been beset by injuries following a horror pre-season at West Lakes that saw a steady procession of players heading to the medical rooms.

There was just nine points in it at three-quarter time at Etihad Stadium, but Craig could only look on as his tiring charges were brushed aside by the Saints on their way to a 47-point win.

"We've just got too many players at the moment who are not physically conditioned to be able to play out the full game," Craig said.

* Where was this quote when we came home in the last quarter against Richmond and North?

* Where was this when we ground out a result against Brisbane?

* Where were these comments when we were actually in pre-season?

* Where were these comments when we were predicting a contending campaign?


we have massively misread where we are as club, we can all see that and now we just have to get on with it. But why oh why, do they have to treat us as if we're stupid? almost with contempt, as if these morons will accept anything.

The most annoying part is that I was happy with us for 3 quarters, and very disappointed we dropped our bundle in the last; I didn't need to be bullshitted as for the first time in a while, I saw genuine progress before the last.

Bottom line: the acoltyes will believe regardless, and this only noises up the iconoclasts. what can be the point of such blatant spin?

 

[Vader]

A lot of it has to do with the number of players who have missed a LOT of training due to injuries. But then again, you don't believe in that do you? You believe that a player is automatically 100% fit the instant their body is recovered from the actual injury, without the need for any training at all to regain lost fitness.

It was hardly surprising that they ran over the top of North. Most of the Crows players hadn't done enough to break a sweat until 3/4 time. They still had full tanks left, which allowed them to storm home when North ground to a halt - having spent all their petrol tickets during the first 3/4 of the game (when it actually meant something).

Richmond are young and still lacking in fitness. Yes, we ran over the top of them, but you're comparing our team with the lowest of low benchmarks. Running out winners in the final quarter there says more about their lack of fitness than it does about our own fitness levels.

Against Brisbane... Not sure what to make of things. I think the players had been ripped a new one by Craig during the week, after the insipid efforts against North the week before. This game was an aberration, as a result.

If you look at all our other games, we've been abysmal in the final quarter every time. 0.4 vs Freo, 3.2 vs Sydney, 0.1 vs Melbourne, 2.4 vs Carlton, 2.3 vs Footscray, 1.4 vs Port and 1.0 vs St Kilda tonight.

The big question is why it's taken them so long to admit that we have a problem in this area. The problem has been obvious since the beginning of the MMC.

 

[aneale]

Spin is an unfortunate symptom of what the game and the league has become. A rather bland and soulless entity of a once great product.

You can't stand behind the nearest tree on a training run for a quick ciggie and wait for the team to come back around.

You can't have a ciggie.

You can't be the guest DJ at your clubs Friday night disco at 3am on game day.

You can't pick up your missus at 2am.

You can't wrestle, shirt front, make accidental head contact, or even remotely look like you are going to do anything physical half the time.

You can't spray the umpires for fear of getting fined.

You can't have a go at players in the media.

It's become a very sterile game with no real personalities anymore. No one is honest. Its actually refreshing and surprising to hear what a coach or player actually thinks. I'm not sure we have had a comment made by a coach that has not been measured and frank since Blighty's comment about Pittman.

Everyone is too scared of what they might say being taken the wrong way that no one says anything and it ends in spin. Then something like this comes out.

 

[Crow-mo]

A lot of it has to do with the number of players who have missed a LOT of training due to injuries. But then again, you don't believe in that do you? You believe that a player is automatically 100% fit the instant their body is recovered from the actual injury, without the need for any training at all to regain lost fitness.

I don't believe in fairies, the easter bunny or revisionism. I also don't believe in relative opinions that don't compare across teams, and think we operate in a vacuum.

I do believe people who say things long after the event, but not at the time, can't be trusted.

It was hardly surprising that they ran over the top of North. Most of the Crows players hadn't done enough to break a sweat until 3/4 time. They still had full tanks left, which allowed them to storm home when North ground to a halt - having spent all their petrol tickets during the first 3/4 of the game (when it actually meant something).

that's not real reason though, that's a tongue in cheek throwaway line. I used it myself at the time.

its not a serious reason.

Richmond are young and still lacking in fitness. Yes, we ran over the top of them, but you're comparing our team with the lowest of low benchmarks. Running out winners in the final quarter there says more about their lack of fitness than it does about our own fitness levels.

hey haven't we been fielding all these young guys, wasn't that the excuse a few weeks ago?

Against Brisbane... Not sure what to make of things. I think they'd been ripped a new one by Craig during the week, after the insipid efforts against North the week before. This game was an aberration, as a result.

ok, so we don't even have any tongue in cheek rationalising for this one?

incidentally, do you know what those 3 games have in common? they were the last 3 weeks before this one.

after getting all this match fitness by playing games, now we are suddenly less fit all of sudden? how convenient.

If you look at all our other games, we've been abysmal in the final quarter every time. 0.4 vs Freo, 3.2 vs Sydney, 0.1 vs Melbourne, 2.4 vs Carlton, 2.3 vs Footscray, 1.4 vs Port and 1.0 vs St Kilda tonight.

Ok, let me see if I understand this:
apart from all the matches we did run out, the rest we didn't. pretty circular logic isn't it?

The big question is why it's taken them so long to admit that we have a problem in this area. The problem has been obvious since the beginning of the MMC.

if it were so obvious where are all the quotes at the time? from our coaches and BF posters?

In fact just before we kicked off the pre-season games, when all the base fitness work had already been done, we were talking up our chances. that's not just obvious, its provable.

the only thing obvious here is how ludicrous this revisionism is.

 

[Crow-mo]

Spin is an unfortunate symptom of what the game and the league has become. A rather bland and soulless entity of a once great product.

You can't stand behind the nearest tree on a training run for a quick ciggie and wait for the team to come back around.

You can't have a ciggie.

You can't be the guest DJ at your clubs Friday night disco at 3am on game day.

You can't pick up your missus at 2am.

You can't wrestle, shirt front, make accidental head contact, or even remotely look like you are going to do anything physical half the time.

You can't spray the umpires for fear of getting fined.

You can't have a go at players in the media.

It's become a very sterile game with no real personalities anymore. No one is honest. Its actually refreshing and surprising to hear what a coach or player actually thinks. I'm not sure we have had a comment made by a coach that has not been measured and frank since Blighty's comment about Pittman.

Everyone is too scared of what they might say being taken the wrong way that no one says anything and it ends in spin. Then something like this comes out.

See this is interesting to explore. Lets say you are 100% correct, and that this is the first honest thing said in lord knows how long.

isn't an honest statement in a sea of spin, just spin too? let me explain: what is the driver for this pique of honesty? what has caused this sudden outburst of truth? that it is has mitigating purpose. If I needed to tell the truth, on a one off basis to release the pressure, then isn't that just more spin? choosing the statement to meet the purpose.

Now I am not sure I actually agree all is spin and this is a statement of truth, just that *IF* it were true it would be no less cynical than more spin.

 

[Vader]

See this is interesting to explore. Lets say you are 100% correct, and that this is the first honest thing said in lord knows how long.

isn't an honest statement in a sea of spin, just spin too? let me explain: what is the driver for this pique of honesty? what has caused this sudden outburst of truth? that it is has mitigating purpose. If I needed to tell the truth, on a one off basis to release the pressure, then isn't that just more spin? choosing the statement to meet the purpose.

Now I am not sure I actually agree all is spin and this is a statement of truth, just that *IF* it were true it would be no less cynical than more spin.

I think it IS one of the few honest things we've seen/heard from the club this year.

Let's look at those games another way. We've sucked severely in 7 of 10 final quarters. The 3 you mentioned were the exceptions to the rule. Any way you care to spin it, the comeback against North had more to do with them taking their foot off the pedal than it did with anything we changed ourselves. Richmond are the worst (and youngest) team in over a decade - yes, we have quite a few youngsters in the side (part of the reason why we're unable to finish games), but Richmond have more - many more. Brisbane remains the single outlier.

I've been commenting for ages about how many of our players are operating well below their normal level of fitness. I've highlighted the likes of Porps and Bock in particular, who missed almost the entire pre-season and thus don't have the base fitness level they would normally require. Mackay was better this week, but still well down on 2009 - it was a dramatic improvement on last week though, which was his first game back after a month on the sidelines. Sadly, we have many players in situations similar to Mackay's.

 

[Southerntakeover]

To me its really an illustration that our football club, or rather the people in charge are doing very very little real analysis as to our woes. They're jumping around every week with a new excuse, like your average football game attending drunk, without any real plan.

Theres no long running theme of fields in which we are to improve... theres no real measure of where we're travelling being done. We're flying by the seat of our pants, all the way to the bottom of the ladder.

 

[aneale]

See this is interesting to explore. Lets say you are 100% correct, and that this is the first honest thing said in lord knows how long.

isn't an honest statement in a sea of spin, just spin too? let me explain: what is the driver for this pique of honesty? what has caused this sudden outburst of truth? that it is has mitigating purpose. If I needed to tell the truth, on a one off basis to release the pressure, then isn't that just more spin? choosing the statement to meet the purpose.

Now I am not sure I actually agree all is spin and this is a statement of truth, just that *IF* it were true it would be no less cynical than more spin.

I think that is exactly what it is. All of a sudden we have a one off moment of truth when the defences go down. Come Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday does it continue or do we go back to talking without saying anything.

If we go back, its part of the spin. I agree.

I still don't accept that any part of our coaching panel can honestly say our pre-season was anything more than a shambles. The injuries alone assured that it wasn't going to be a flash year. The 'we are aiming for top 4' quotes from NC I found bemusing given we only had to look at Hawthorn 2009 to realise that would be a tough ask. And the Hawks didn't fall before the PF in 2008. They had some pedigree.

 

[TDRP]

Yawn... Scandal in a Crow Mo tea cup.

What would you like the cub to say after tonights result? We lost... injuries, conditioning, inexperience, umpires, coaches, St Kilda, chaos theory... all played a part in the result.

We know who isn't playing well at the moment, and for the most part we know why. No one is fooling anyone with respect to this spin you speak of. It is what it is... not a lot of spin required...

In reality... Craigy could just sit there... not mention injuries, umpires, conditioning and just say we fell away, we didn't execute, we didn't this, we didn't that... it might all be true... it'd still all be spin and it still makes no difference to us getting the result we seek as a footy club.

Lame thread.

 

[smoovy]

Hasn't this 'spin' word creeped into the vernacular of late.

CM you could be a media advisor to Isobel Redmond. How do you know it is BS anyway?

It may have some merit, NC hasn't really commented on lack of preparation before. Which by him not saying anything implies it isn't a problem. You could say then that was 'spin' by silence in making us feel it all would be ok.

 

[moogerfooger]

"In the end, Adelaide had too many young bodies who were spent, just as West Coast had found the week before."

That was Emma Quayle's view.

We are going to have fade outs when we're playing guys like Sloane, Armstrong, Davis, Jaensch, Walker, Schmidt, Petrenko, Gunston, Henderson and Cook - none of whom were regulars last year and most of whom have single digit game tallies. We've been playing 5-6 of these guys each week all year - about 25% of our side.

I don't think it's much a stretch to say those players don't yet have the fitness to go toe to toe with St Kilda for a full 100 minutes.

 

[kulak]

Craig always excuses the players in public.

After last years finals choke, he said in the post match interview that while the third quarter wasn't good, it's not too bad because we came back in the fourth.

Earlier this year he was very supportive of the older players, but two of them have now been dropped.

Even after the North debacle he said gentle things like "we need to find a valid reason for that performance."

Whether this is part of a calculated approach to maximise morale, or just a sense of loyalty to preserving the players' reputation is not clear.

What he says in private is not clear. I suspect he is a lot tougher than he would seem from his public persona.

There's no point expecting him to come out after all this time and get stuck into a rubbish performance, it would be totally inconsistent with exposed form.

 

[noddy]

Craig always excuses the players in public.

After last years finals choke, he said in the post match interview that while the third quarter wasn't good, it's not too bad because we came back in the fourth.

Earlier this year he was very supportive of the older players, but two of them have now been dropped.

Even after the North debacle he said gentle things like "we need to find a valid reason for that performance."

Whether this is part of a calculated approach to maximise morale, or just a sense of loyalty to preserving the players' reputation is not clear.

What he says in private is not clear. I suspect he is a lot tougher than he would seem from his public persona.

There's no point expecting him to come out after all this time and get stuck into a rubbish performance, it would be totally inconsistent with exposed form.

Agree with this.

Not all that disappointed in last nights game & there is definitely something there for us to build upon.

Crow-mo you should know by now that "Spin" has replaced the "Twist" as the fab gimmick for the enlightened ones.

 

[taylor_walker_13]

Why The Spin?

Because the club knows/thinks the AFC supporters are pathetic, they know they will get the members back next year and also know they dont have to answer to the members anyway therefore that equals SPIN

 

[Allefgib]

Really wanted to have a listen to the full presser before commenting but its 'unavailable due to popular demand'. lol.

Anyway, from reading the article I'd say its no more spin than we usually get. Which yes is frustrating but not unexpected.

Some of the lines seem to indicate some admission of the player mis-management and issues with the fitness programme many of us had suspected:

"We're in the process of looking at all that," he said.

"Some of it is bad luck I would say, like Andy Otten doing an ACL at training. Patrick Dangerfield falling on his wrist and breaking a bone in the game against the Western Bulldogs has got nothing to do with our [fitness] program, so you tick those off, but we need to look at every situation and be very diligent in all of that.

"It's not put-your-head-in-the-sand stuff - if there's changes to be made in terms of our conditioning and management and so forth we need to be very open-minded about that and we will be."

Still not entirely sure how I feel about that last quarter myself yet.

 

[fourtheye]

So to us uneducated morons what was the real problem? Because they looked pretty knackered to me...

 

[WALL-e]

It's the view of The Age as well.

Too many guys who due to injuries, age or inexperience, can't run 4 quarters at 100%.

Lets deal with it though.

 

[I_Was_There]

In my opinion, we are suffering a revised look at pre-season that has gone horribly wrong - pyschologically and physiologically. In the past finals (or near finals) campaigns, Adelaide has run out of puff and this was put down to the hard pre-season approach (and other factors such as game style etc) adopted Adelaide.

I would not be surprised if, and I have no facts to support this view, the approach to the early part of the season was completely different to previous years. However, as the train started going downhill and started to crash, injuries, fitness, and a range of other matters, meant it was impossible to turn it around.

 

[Allefgib]

In my opinion, we are suffering a revised look at pre-season that has gone horribly wrong - pyschologically and physiologically. In the past finals (or near finals) campaigns, Adelaide has run out of puff and this was put down to the hard pre-season approach (and other factors such as game style etc) adopted Adelaide.

I would not be surprised if, and I have no facts to support this view, the approach to the early part of the season was completely different to previous years. However, as the train started going downhill and started to crash, injuries, fitness, and a range of other matters, meant it was impossible to turn it around.

I think you might be onto something with this thought process.

The main thing its lacking is evidence - the 'pattern/theory' does seem to fit though.

If true you'd think everyone will dread the next pre-season

If it were true the Club could certainly clear that up for us if they chose to.

 

[Pilchard_Adams]

As Vader said, players do not always return from injury at 100%. Then Crow-Mo compare this to fairy tales and the easter bunny. If a player is at 100% peak physical fitness and pulls his hamstring resulting in 4 weeks off injured, that player will not return in 5 weeks time at 100% peak physical fitness. But an injury like Johncocks broken thumb allows him to continue training and running to keep his fitness up. Regardless of whether the injuries Adelaide have suffered are to stars or just fringe players, they have all been covered by inexperience.

Symes, Otten, Moran, Porps, Knights, Bock, Vince, Johncock, Dangerfield, MacKay, Stevens, VB may or may not all be stars, but one thing they have in common is they are players who have been exposed to at least 1 AFL season. Their bodies know what to expect, they know the fitness level required. Throughout the year they have been replaced by Davis, Jaensch, Armstrong, Young, Henderson, Cook, Petrenko, Schmidt, Sloane, Gunston. They are small fish in a big pond in the AFL and are inexperienced. It will take a few years for their bodies to adapt and fill out, and being young players they will struggle in some parts of the game, one part being adapting to AFL football.

The Saints had 2 players under 23 years of age last night, Stanly and McEvoy. Adelaide had 8 in Davis, Schmidt, Petrenko, Walker, Dangerfield, Sloane, Armstrong, MacKay.

Its also no surprise the players not playing as well as last year are the ones who are dealing with injury, or missed large amounts of preseason and weeks of AFL

 

[IddyBiddy]

I watched NC full after match interview today. It's worth taking a look at. Conditioning is the consistent message throughout the entire thing, some statements are obviously missed in the newspapers. Craigy suggests that each area of the ground is currently impacted by poor conditioning of one or more key players:

Backline: Nathan Bock - match fitness not where it should be. He also said Phil Davis needed further match fitness, but appeared to base his lack of "conditioning" on his age and the fact he is in game 10 of his career

Midfield: DMac, 4 weeks off, 2.5 of which he was unable to do conditioning work

Forward: Porps, said his season is the product of poor conditioning

He then went on to say that the perfect example of a player who got a good pre-season in and has pushed themselves throughout the year is Richie Douglas. NC also said that he wanted to see players pushing themselves in the final quarter to improve their conditioning because the with recovery requirements it is difficult to get that conditioning base at training.

There were parts of the interview i found quiet interesting. In particular the fact that we'll be trying different structures for the rest of the season, including ruck structures. I think we'll see Sellar come in at some stage.

Overall, listening to the interview, it didn't strike me as 'spin', although admittedly I don't think i've ever heard an AFL coach blame injuries and conditioning to the extent that NC did and without prefacing it with the old "we're not going to use injuries as an excuse" line. Clearly NC thinks our injury and conditioning situation is genuinely and issue. I can't say i blame him. So in short, i guess i disagree with your use of the word 'spin' .

 

[Mismatched]

In my opinion, we are suffering a revised look at pre-season that has gone horribly wrong - pyschologically and physiologically. In the past finals (or near finals) campaigns, Adelaide has run out of puff and this was put down to the hard pre-season approach (and other factors such as game style etc) adopted Adelaide.

I would not be surprised if, and I have no facts to support this view, the approach to the early part of the season was completely different to previous years. However, as the train started going downhill and started to crash, injuries, fitness, and a range of other matters, meant it was impossible to turn it around.

I'm not sure it would have been too different to last years though. Last year, unlike previous years, we were actually peaking at the right time of the year, unfortunately we stumbled, only just as well, in the Semi against Collingwood.

Now for whatever reason, our preseason was average, many were expressing their concerns well before the NAB cup, honestly, I thought we could get over it, clearly I was wrong. We are not a side who is fit enough to challenge top 4 sides. Sure, we can still match it for 4 quarters with competition easy beats like the Roos and the Tigers, or an injury ravaged Brisbane at home, but against genuine top 4, or even top 8 sides we have no hope. We're good enough to go with them, or even beat them for a quarter or 2 and we've shown this, unfortunately we just can't sustain this. In fact, I believe one of the commentators last night commented that when we're going, we're a definite top 8 side.

Now there's certainly other issues at play, I'm lead to believe there's one or two players around the club who are causing a bit of disharmony. I also believe as a club we got ahead of ourselves during the preseason, became too arrogant and just believed the hype far too much and as a result, the players felt that they merely needed to "rock up" and they would beat sides like Port or Fremantle. Its too late to change too much this season, we now need a preseason to assess, reset and reload, I think we'll see a much improved Adelaide next season.

As for the spin, what's new? Clubs use spin all the time, they're just like politicians. I rarely bother to listen to/read what coaches have to say during the season, its generally just the same old crap trotted out each week, it just differs depending the current status quo. Its what the club does both on the field and off it that I care about. I'm sure the club could say whatever they liked in their current situation and they'd still be widely criticised for saying it.

I think as we see the season go on, we'll see the club become more open and honest. At the beginning of the season we probably wanted to protect the fact that many of our players were massively underdone, even though it was rather quite obvious. However, as the season wears on, there'll be little point being cagey about what's happening at the footy club and the club will start to inform us of what really went wrong.

 

[Crow-mo]

I think it IS one of the few honest things we've seen/heard from the club this year.

Let's look at those games another way. We've sucked severely in 7 of 10 final quarters. The 3 you mentioned were the exceptions to the rule. Any way you care to spin it, the comeback against North had more to do with them taking their foot off the pedal than it did with anything we changed ourselves. Richmond are the worst (and youngest) team in over a decade - yes, we have quite a few youngsters in the side (part of the reason why we're unable to finish games), but Richmond have more - many more. Brisbane remains the single outlier.

I've been commenting for ages about how many of our players are operating well below their normal level of fitness. I've highlighted the likes of Porps and Bock in particular, who missed almost the entire pre-season and thus don't have the base fitness level they would normally require. Mackay was better this week, but still well down on 2009 - it was a dramatic improvement on last week though, which was his first game back after a month on the sidelines. Sadly, we have many players in situations similar to Mackay's.

look even if we take your final quarter thing, the fact is before this week we had issues in round 1-6, and no issues in round 7-9.

I recall the commentators talking at 3/4 time yesterday about our ability to run out games, how strong we've been recently in 4th quarters, and how Craig teams were always supremely fit. Now I am not suggesting that are as up to date as they could be, but it does illustrate that everyone (rightly) thought we had moved on.

if our fitness base was sooooo low, that we couldn't run out a game in round 10, round 10 for chrissakes, then this would have been predictable a month before the season even began. maybe earlier.

 

[Crow-mo]

I think that is exactly what it is. All of a sudden we have a one off moment of truth when the defences go down. Come Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday does it continue or do we go back to talking without saying anything.

If we go back, its part of the spin. I agree.

I still don't accept that any part of our coaching panel can honestly say our pre-season was anything more than a shambles. The injuries alone assured that it wasn't going to be a flash year. The 'we are aiming for top 4' quotes from NC I found bemusing given we only had to look at Hawthorn 2009 to realise that would be a tough ask. And the Hawks didn't fall before the PF in 2008. They had some pedigree.

OK, again I am not sure I agree but lets run with it.

IF our preparation was a shambles, and this should have been obvious to our coaching panel then they have been guilty of massive complacency about the state of our list, and the state of competition across the league.

which would then fit nicely with some of our 2009 post decisions and inactivity.

basically this compacency would be tantamount to gross mismanagement.

 

[Crow-mo]

Yawn... Scandal in a Crow Mo tea cup.

What would you like the cub to say after tonights result? We lost... injuries, conditioning, inexperience, umpires, coaches, St Kilda, chaos theory... all played a part in the result.

We know who isn't playing well at the moment, and for the most part we know why. No one is fooling anyone with respect to this spin you speak of. It is what it is... not a lot of spin required...

In reality... Craigy could just sit there... not mention injuries, umpires, conditioning and just say we fell away, we didn't execute, we didn't this, we didn't that... it might all be true... it'd still all be spin and it still makes no difference to us getting the result we seek as a footy club.

Lame thread.

as I said the acolytes will be happy regardless.