ADELAIDE assistant Mark Bickley still wants to be a senior AFL coach, and believes success in the finals can help him become one.
After six games as Adelaide's caretaker coach last year following the resignation of Neil Craig, Bickley was overlooked for the top job in favour of Brenton Sanderson, and said he hadn't been contacted by Port Adelaide since Matthew Primus departed as senior coach last month.
While the two-time premiership captain maintained his senior coaching ambitions weren't "something that's occupying a lot of my thought", he said the best way to make it happen would be to help the Crows to their third flag.
"Generally the assistant coaches that are in high demand are the ones that come from successful organisations," Bickley said.
"I think there were five new coaches last year, and five of them came out of generally Geelong and Collingwood, who were the Grand Final teams.
"I would have thought if I want to be a senior coach, it'd be a really good route for me to be really successful here. If that's the case, people will probably want you."
If the comparisons Bickley made between the current Crows side and the team he captained to consecutive premierships in 1997 and 1998 prove true, ultimate success is just around the corner.
Like today's side, the Crows entered the 1997 season with a new coach and on the back of a period in which the team failed to play finals football.
While Bickley acknowledged it was difficult to compare past and present sides, he said major similarities also existed in the age demographic of the teams' lists.
While the 1997 Adelaide team had a young group of budding stars in Andrew McLeod, Mark Ricciuto, Simon Goodwin, Kane Johnson and Tyson Edwards, the current group has the likes of Patrick Dangerfield, Rory Sloane, Taylor Walker, Daniel Talia and Sam Jacobs.
"We some younger guys who were just bursting onto the stage," Bickley said of the Crows' 1997 and '98 sides.
"Andrew McLeod had probably played 30 or 40 games, 'Roo' (Ricciuto) was still a young bloke, 'Goody' (Goodwin) was a bit the same, Kane Johnson," Bickley said.
"They didn't have a lot of fear. They just went out and wanted to pay well, and if you look at some of the guys who have been really good for us, they're in the same age bracket.
"You'd got Walker who's 22, Jacobs is a similar age, Dangerfield, Sloane … you've got this up-and-coming group of players who've really put their mark on the team this year."
Bickley said Adelaide's lean years in 2010-11 meant there was little danger the current group would be "spoilt" by the success of this year.
"The last two years have been a difficult time for this football club," he said.
"In some ways [the players] feel as if this is the culmination of a couple of years of hard work."
Harry Thring is a reporter for AFL Media. Follow him on Twitter: @AFL_Harry.
