Given how appealing humans find metric milestones and closure, there exists a nice thought about an awful story. Adelaide finished this year on top of the ladder, with a second shot at a preliminary final if they can get past Hawthorn this Friday night. Ten years since former coach Phil Walsh died in 2015, the Crows are a chance of a flag. It would not heal any principal hurts, but it would mean something to some.
The mid-season death of a coach would have shaken the club whatever the circumstances, especially after losing assistant coach Dean Bailey to cancer the year before, but Walsh’s case was even harder to fathom given it came from a domestic tragedy: a father fatally injured while his son suffered a psychotic episode. Given that any coaching role has a parental aspect, such a tragedy within a family felt obscenely unfair on all involved.
Adelaide supporters and officials are more likely to have this memory on their minds than players. Taylor Walker, Rory Laird, Brodie Smith and Reilly O’Brien are all that remain of the class of 2015. Matt Crouch retired early this season. In any case, Walsh only had the chance to coach a dozen games at the Crows, a tenure that had just begun. He was more deeply a Port Adelaide man, having spent a premiership-winning decade there as an assistant, then returning for another season in a second stint before being lured across town for the top job.
We’ll never know what he might have done with the place, and it would take a major study to document how his loss affected it. So while avoiding any specious claim that his tragedy caused what followed, there has seemed to be a shadow over the club in the years since. One way or another at Adelaide, things have kept going wrong, in ways that emanate from the culture within the club rather than being visited upon it from outside.
First up, while every grand final has a losing team, and plenty of them get belted, Adelaide’s version in 2017 was a greater embarrassment than any thanks to the “power stance” nonsense copied from some grifter on LinkedIn. Clench those fists, flare those nostrils. Off they went to intimidate the opposition, all lined up in a row to do absolutely nothing, like a haka with a flat battery. Then after so much literal posturing, to be the team that just didn’t show up? The Crows might as well have saved the 50 bucks on Jetstar and not come to Melbourne at all.
That led to the infamous “bonding” camp, with its dudes-rock-sweat-lodge style that angered so many players. For years administrators refused to acknowledge a problem, while board member Mark Ricciuto publicly blasted Crows who decided to leave. Eddie Betts was particularly affected and departed the club at the end of 2019. Walker vindicated his departure with his racist outburst at a SANFL game in 2021, leading to a playing ban and mass damage control. That situation is right now mirrored for Izak Rankine, serving his ban for homophobic abuse of a Collingwood opponent in round 23.
Rather than take the chance to demonstrate club values, Adelaide lobbied the AFL for a reduced suspension to clear Rankine’s chance at a grand final. Rather than dismiss this, the AFL agreed. Rather than behave with decency when Collingwood returned to town for the first final, sections of Adelaide supporters booed the same player that Rankine had targeted, while sections of local media blamed him for Rankine’s punishment. Rather than say something, anything, about any of this, coach Matthew Nicks dodged the questions until finally breaking his silence on Thursday. A sport that lionises courage on the field so often involves a complete absence of it everywhere else.
All of that makes for an effective combination to squander the goodwill otherwise likely for a club lifting itself for a long-awaited tilt. But that’s the goodwill from a distance. Home support seems fine. In his years-long column on the Crows, the fatalistic Tom Richardson described the club as “a microcosm of the city that spawned it”, in being one that its supporters “revel in ridiculing, and yet staunchly defend against the tiniest barb from across the borders”. That remains true.
Excitement is up, and while both Adelaide teams have their core of diehards, the Crows have far more bandwagon space. Put it this way: there weren’t many problems getting tickets when Port had the home town double chance last year. Good luck this year. Last week the local paper had a four-page supplement of text messages congratulating Walker on his 300th game. Port legend Travis Boak’s farewell last year didn’t get that treatment. In a way, the Hawthorn final this week will be a citywide affair. Adelaide still need to win it, or become the first AFL-era minor premiers to lose both finals. The chance to break the streak of sadness is at hand, but so is the chance to perfectly continue that trend.
• This article was amended on 12 September 2025. Charlie Cameron was traded to Brisbane in October 2017 before the 2018 preseason camp. Taylor Walker was not Adelaide captain at the time of the 2021 racial vilification incident; Rory Sloane was the sole captain. Eddie Betts did not leave Adelaide immediately after the 2018 preseason; he was traded to Carlton in October 2019.
