The straight-sets exit for the 2025 Adelaide Crows has drawn ridicule and derision from those who take delight in the failure of others.
It’s understandable – many of the people celebrating Adelaide’s consecutive losses to Collingwood and Hawthorn don’t even have a team competing in the finals. It makes them feel better.
However, looking at the rise of the Crows in 2025, a finals failure was not all that unexpected. It’s not like a team that finished 15th in 2024 was expected to win it all 12 months later, but after a very solid home and away season, the Crows found themselves in unfamiliar territory. And whilst the lights were a little too bright in September this season, this is a club that isn’t going to fade into obscurity, and there are plenty of lessons to take out of this season that’ll hold them in great stead for 2026.
Sounds like a bit of a cop-out, right?
I mean, I hate that saying, as well – what were the learnings? It’s rubbish.
In a nutshell, the club, the coach, and the players need to be better, but there are ways of addressing other deficiencies that were exposed over the first two weekends of finals, and that’s what we plan to look at here.
The remainder of this article is for our members. They support me, and I provide for them. It’s a good deal.
Oh… a Mongrel paywall… the worst of all paywalls. Why? Because HB believes work such as this is worth a mere pittance per day. Whilst you could stick with Caro’s Arrow or Kane’s Vol-Kane-O, you’ll get your 500 words in the newspaper and be happy, or you could dive articles like this. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. You’re welcome to join and keep reading if you do.
