Adelaide

Footy is BACK!!! And so is the Gripper.  This season the Gripper will look inside every coaching box in the AFL and come to grips with the characters that make the team tick.  This week: 

Adelaide . . .

Having wowed the press gallery with his stand-up routine for 8 seasons, Neil Craig, Adelaide’s longest serving coach, was told it was time he took his comedy act on the road.  Which, luckily for Melbourne fans he did, assisting them to some of the funniest results the Demon’s have posted in quite a few years. And so it is that the Adelaide Football Club finds itself one of many clubs in 2012 starting the season with a new coach. 

Brenton Sanderson comes to Adelaide via playing stints at Adelaide, Collingwood and Geelong and Assistant Coaching stints at Port Adelaide and Geelong through its premiership years.  Not a favourite for the job, Sanderson had to beat hot contender Scott Burns as well as local hero and Assistant Coach Mark Bickley.  In selecting Sanderson, the Crow’s board said ‘‘He has the skills, experience, plans and personal qualities” for the job.  Which is a not-so-polite way of saying they thought Mark Bickley had no skills, no experience, no plans and no personal qualities. We can only guess that Scott Burns turned up to the interview in a Port Adelaide jumper.

Not one to intellectualise the game, Sanderson’s approach is simple: kick the ball long, over the defensive zones, to a marking contest.  Sounds like a good theory until you watch an Adelaide game and realise that this game plan could do for Kurt Tippet what it did for Warrick Capper at the Swans and the Fev at the Blues: turn a rolled-gold bogan into a star. Sporting the kind of mullet that even Steve Kernahan rejects, expect Tippet to start popping up on the Footy Show with occasional appearances at the Adelaide Magistrates Court.

Rounding out the coaching panel are Assistant Coaches Mark Bickley, Darren Milburn and Scott Comporeale.  While all are former premiership players, they each bring something unique to the coaching table. Milburn and Bickley can use their experience to teach half the team how to knock guys heads off while they’re not looking, while Campo is the designated “Seagull Coach”, teaching players to effectively hang around packs screaming “Mine! Mine!”.

Senior Coach
Brenton Sanderson

Assistant Coaches
Mark Bickley
Scott Camporeale
Darren Milburn

Strategy and Innovation Coach
Dean Bailey

Pro-scout/Analyst
Rob Harding

Development and Analysis Advisor
Mark Upton

Senior Performance Analyst
Steven Edgecomb

Performance Analyst
Brock Wiseman