Neil Craig Resigns

Neil Craig has just announced his resignation as coach of Adelaide.

He will take a leave of absence for an indefinite period before discussing any ongoing role at the club.

Mark Bickley will fill in as caretaker until season’s end.

Full details from the Crows website here.

What do our South Australian Almanackers think?

And how do the rest of us react to the first (not last?) coaching change of the season?

Comments

  1. Thats the first leg of my double home.
    When does it get announced that Neil Craig is taking over as Umpires Coach (he has the analytical mind and qualifications) and Jeff Gieschen is going to Adelaide as Bickley’s assistant ( has all the qualifications – two time loser who stuffed up previous jobs)??
    Sorry – frustration with umpiring as a blot on the spectacle of our game is boiling over with me. Will take my Ballantyne-coping mogadons and have a good lie down.

  2. johnharms says

    I liked watching Neil Craig at press conferences, although the empirical approach sometimes seemed to miss the point of a chaotic game played by imperfect creatures. Yet I wouldn’t put Neil Craig in the uber-bureacratic camp of Ross Lyon.

    I liked that his Adelaide sides could make the most of their talent (until the last 18 months). I was bemused that sides could play so freely for a quarter or so, and then become choked and reticent quarter of an hour later – eg v Pies in the semi in 2009.

    I think Neil Craig ultimately became a victim of his own logical approach. By declaring he had the most talented list he’d ever had (or words to that effect), when that list failed to deliver, factors other than the players were the issue. That pointed to those responsible for the development of the players..

    I wonder what he will do next. I imagine a man of his intelligence and experience would find a role somewhere.

  3. Both Adelaide clubs are now basket cases. Not bad. I was hoping he would stay on so we could write the Crows off for another year.

  4. Andrew Fithall says

    Again a club is going down the path of an interim coach, which I believe is a risky approach. What can happen is that the coach gets a few wins from the remaining games – an improvement from what had gone before – and the club is almost obliged to appoint them to the permanent role. So instead of going through a proper full-recruitment exercise, they end up with just one candidate, or maybe one candidate who is given a head-start ahead of the other candidates. It happened with Craig himself. Rarely (Paul Roos is a definite exception) has it worked out positively in the long run. It is just like News Limited considering only Murdoch family members as potential CEO, or a nation saying that only certain members of a certain family can be that nation’s head of state (even if they live in another country). Surely no rational person would accept that as normal!

    Strike me down for my bias, but when Collingwood and Tony Shaw announced before season’s end that he wouldn’t be coaching the next season, but would see out the current year, they gave the club full opportunity to properly consider all available candidates and removed the false-interview of the stand-in-coach. The outcome was the Malthouse appointment.

  5. David Downer says

    Sorry Gigs, might be stealing your thunder here but…
     
    2001: Adelaide (10th) defeat St Kilda (14th) by 97pts on a July Friday night at the Dome.
    St Kilda coach gone on Monday.
     
    2011: St Kilda (10th) defeat Adelaide (14th) by 103pts on a July Friday night at the Dome.
    Adelaide coach gone on Monday.

    Cue Twilight Zone soundtrack…

  6. Will we see a malt house hopping over to McLaren Vale?

  7. Who was the statistical kill joy who kicked the Saint’s last goal?

  8. Alovesupreme says

    Phantom,
    ‘That reminds me of the advertising slogan for a boutique brewery in the Margaret River area:
    “an oasis of beer in a desert of wine”.

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