‘Could be another real chase towards mediocrity’: Why it’s time the Crows’ board and Nicks start listening to the fans

It feels like a story all too familiar for the Crows under Matthew Nicks as the club merely limps its way through another season.

There must be something in the water South Australian coaches drink because neither team seems willing to accept its shortcomings and look for solutions.

For Nicks, we broke down how important it was to use the contract extension as a motivator, to play a faster style of football more becoming of a team with high-octane potential.

While extensions are usually met with positives, this one felt like a crossroads for the Nicks and the club.

It’s so strange because there are times within games where you can be convinced that the Crows are a September threat and perhaps even more, but these represent little more than just fleeting moments. Perhaps the coaching staff and board treat these periods more importantly than they should.

They beat the Blues with a barnstorming last quarter, they nearly pulled off a similar victory against the Magpies. They drew with Brisbane and they beat Port Adelaide in the Showdown, which may not end up looking that impressive as the season goes on.

In the last fortnight, they’ve lost to Hawthorn and Richmond.

As regular readers may well have realised, the actual results are inconsequential – the Crows continue to play uninspiring footy and are without doubt, the most disappointing team in the AFL halfway through 2024.

They’re ranked fourth for disposals per game, but 12th for inside 50s. Once inside 50, they score at a bottom eight rate, only better than the worst teams in the league; the opportunistic Hawks and the Queensland teams that themselves are barely functioning with an unsustainable attack.

The Crows are a bottom-six tackling team and are ranked identically for forward pressure, they don’t get the ball forward with much purpose and they’re 11th for marks inside 50 even with having so much of the ball and despite trying to put emphasis on their midfield, they’re a middle-of-the-pack clearance team.

Sure, Izak Rankine’s absence in general has been destructive for this group, but even with him in, it was hardly sustainable football.

So fine, Nicks has got this previously high-scoring, entertaining offensive group playing inefficient and really, just bang average footy in attack. Defence has to be better, right?

The Crows concede a score 44.5 per cent of the time the ball enters their defensive 50. The only teams that are worse are North Melbourne and West Coast by a considerable margin, and the Tigers, who are just about equal. Fittingly, these happen to be the bottom four teams in the league.

Let’s not forget that a decent amount of people tipped the Crows as their dark horse for the flag.

They concede the fourth-fewest disposals but that’s not a positive here – their opponents average the fifth-most metres gained and are efficient when they go inside 50. Adelaide can defend aerially just fine, but once that ball is at ground level, it’s curtains (sadly, not Daniel for Crows fans).

When a team restricts the amount of ball the opposition has, it’s not meant to translate into more inside 50s and hitting the scoreboard as frequently as is the case here.

We might even be able to mention that the Crows could well be lucky here, given their opponents are amongst the league’s most inaccurate in 2024.

You can understand why Crows fans are frustrated, especially when the messaging out of the club fails to provide any sort of reassurance or self-reflection.

It’s almost as if there’s too much pride involved, certainly, it feels more and more as though 2023 was seen as an accomplishment and any dark horse predictions for this year were seen as a badge of honour that would eventuate into a result.

The insistence on picking favoured veterans appears to have finally been addressed, but we’re halfway through the season and the goalposts have clearly shifted at the Crows.

Chasing the September dream won’t be over in season 2024. It’s one of the closer seasons yet and while the Crows are in the bottom four, they have a percentage of 107.1 at the moment.

Internally, that’ll be seen as a big positive. Externally, it feels as though it’ll be another real chase towards mediocrity if Nicks and his staff prioritise finishing positions over a full squad analysis.

Hard decisions have come more scarcely at Adelaide than most other teams in recent seasons, but when the team is playing in such a disinterested, uninspired manner, there’s not much of a choice anymore.

There’s plenty of talent at the Crows, which is maybe the biggest indictment on Nicks.

Yes, the injury list has quality, bonafide best 22 names like Rankine, Riley Thilthorpe, Josh Worrell, Wayne Milera and Matt Crouch, with veteran Taylor Walker around the mark, but there are a lot better teams suffering a lot more at the moment.

Now simply has to be the time to keep giving Luke Nankervis these strong minutes he’s been getting, and see what the likes of Brayden Cook and Luke Pedlar have really got up the ground.

Don’t punish Josh Rachele for being vocal about his midfield minutes, but rather, see if he can back up his words in that position.

Here’s some advice – don’t even allow there to be a discussion that Billy Dowling, extremely encouraging on debut, could be the sub. That’s literally the opposite of what Nicks and the Crows should be doing.

There has to be a shift away from the comfortable norm that has been developed at the Crows in Nicks’ tenure and a challenge has to be set to one’s self, and to the playing group. Some of the known quantities are good, a lot have proven to be middling at best and some, are just simply not up to it.

It sort of feels like the final straw for the Crows and Nicks, it’s certainly been seen that way from the media and more importantly, the fans of the club.

The board has continued to be disappointing all throughout and without any shift in on-field mindset or off-field communications and approach, it’ll simply be yet another disasterclass for the Crows in a short period of time.

It’s no longer a finals or bust proposition for the Crows because even if they somehow made it to September, it almost certainly won’t have been through any meaningful change towards a youth movement.

Striving for mediocrity has been the tale of the Crows for years and it leaves the team in a worse state year-on-year.
Adelaide fans have had enough and the club itself should feel similarly.

Coach Nicks has to test his squad out and see what the team has got on its hands, otherwise extracting anything out of this talent will have clearly been too tough a challenge.

It’s the only way to change the ending of a familiar story for Crows fans in 2024.