As is so often the case I discovered the news first thing in the morning via social media. On waking that July morning in 2015, I opened Twitter on my phone and saw the tweet by Advertiser journalist Tory Shepherd: “Holy shit. Crows coach Phil Walsh has been killed.” And just like that the awful tragedy of life muscled its way into a pastime that is supposed to be a joyful release.
Sport for the most part only uses tragedy in a hyperbolic sense in reference to a missed shot on goal, or perhaps a knee injury that sees a player miss a grand final. And yet here was tragedy writ large – a father killed by his son during a psychotic episode as a result of schizophrenia.
The loss to his family is beyond comprehension, but the loss to the football world and most crucially to the Adelaide football club and its supporters was also immense – and is why Crows fans and all those connected with the club will feel greater weight, have greater hope and experience greater nerves than usual this Friday night.
As a Crows supporter (oh let’s not be cute, as a desperately devoted Crows fanatic) I loved Walsh as a coach. He seemed a wonderful amalgam of tradition and abstract. He was a bloke who would talk about having “man conversations” with players, but who in the last week of June that year when speaking to reporters referred to the time he saw Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, saying “and I looked at that painting... and for a bogan from Hamilton like myself, I could actually see beauty in that frustration. So although our fans are frustrated, we’re frustrated, we like to think there’s some masterpieces still to be painted this year.”
A week later he was dead. The Crows were not unused to tragedy – their senior assistant coach, (and close friend of Phil Wash), Dean Bailey had died of lung cancer just the year before – but this was of a scale no club had ever endured.
But the footy season keeps going. The Crows, after a cancelled match against Geelong, ventured to Perth to play the West Coast Eagles and in a performance that stirred the soul, kicked six goals in the first quarter to lead by 14. But while sport may seem to be the place for miracles, reality mostly wins out. The emotional cost on the players took hold and the Eagles ran over them, with the Crows breaking down in tears after the final siren.
Few gave them much hope for the rest of the season, and yet they won six of the last nine games to finish seventh. They beat the Bulldogs in a classic elimination final only then to be soundly beaten by Hawthorn the following week as again the burden of emotion mixed with the reality of a better opponent saw them go down by 74 points.
And just to ensure Crows fans would not begin to relax and think of better times ahead, the club’s – nay the league’s – best player abandoned them to venture home to Geelong and the more media-plentiful environs of Melbourne. The Crows were again not unused to this situation. In 2011 they had lost a gun key forward to Hawthorn and a key defender to GWS, and in 2012 a star ruckman to Sydney – a loss that also saw the Crows lose draft picks for two years due to salary cap violations.
The very serious people mused that it all meant the Crows would struggle in 2016 – and to be honest most pessimistic Crows fans (which are most Crows fans) thought so as well. But then a new coach, Don Pyke, built a game plan on the foundations laid by Phil Walsh, which saw the Crows playing attractive, attacking football and finishing fifth.
Once again they won their first final, but were soundly defeated in the second. And again the serious people noted they lacked a mature body in the midfield, and needed someone like Bryce Gibbs from Carlton otherwise teams would go past them. But Carlton didn’t like what the Crows offered for him and so Gibbs remained in the navy blue and the Crows, we were told, would struggle. Their midfield was too weak – Rory Sloane was a champion, but take him out and they were done.
Then this year, this group of players who have been through so much, who have endured tragedy and expectations burdened with comments of “think how good they would be if [insert player] had not left” played with flair and verve and finished top after the minor round.
And then their best player Sloane suffered appendicitis and missed the first final. Oh come on. No matter, the midfield, led by the Crouch brothers, who seem to take suggestions about a lack of depth personally, destroyed Greater Western Sydney. But in the same game rebounding defender Brodie Smith ruptured his ACL, and then news came this week that key forward Mitch McGovern has injured his hamstring.
Oh come on. Cripes, the football gods really make you earn it. Joy is so close, and yet no Crows fan would be thinking a preliminary final win is a mere formality. It has now been 19 years since the Crows won a preliminary final – a period in which only the Crows, Richmond and the new-comers, GWS and the Gold Coast have not done so.
Trepidation towards preliminary finals is in Crows’ supporters DNA. The club’s first such final in 1993 saw them give up a 42-point half-time lea – the biggest collapse in an AFL final, and second only to the 1970 VFL grand final. Of course the Crows had some redemption in 1997 when they were the ones to come back from a half time deficit – this time 31 points against the Bulldogs. But even though they won that and the rematch the following year, the trepidation remains.
Losses came again in 2002, 2005 and worst of all 2006 when up by 22 points at home after half-time they were overrun by West Coast, with Ben Cousins playing with a renewed vigour that burns Crows fans to this day. Then another loss in 2012 to Hawthorn – tantalisingly by under a goal. Oh well, they were a young side; better things will come soon. That soon was five years, and much tragedy, later.
Yes you can talk of other clubs’ stories, but none could match the Crows for the journey its current players have taken – a narrative more like a Russian novel than a fairy tale. And for those wanting their narratives tied up with a nice bow, a Crows flag would also provide the perfect bookend to a season that began with the Crows women’s side winning the inaugural AFLW premiership.
For me as a Crows fan on Friday night will be all nerves and pain. The joy of winning a preliminary final is always tempered with “we still have one more to go”, but the loss is the worst loss any team has that year. All four teams this year have had more recent experience of falling at this second last hurdle than clearing it – Geelong in 2013 and 2016, GWS last year and Richmond in 1995 and 2001.
And so all four will have their supporters thinking they are due, that this is their time. But for the Crows, this is not just about winning a game and making a grand final, this is more than that. It will be a chance to finally paint the masterpiece that Phil Walsh foresaw.
