Club Champion Rory Sloane says the Crows must get tougher both physically and mentally over the pre-season.
Adelaide lost five games by fewer than two goals this season to finish 11th on the AFL ladder, with a record of 10 wins and 12 losses. Sloane tipped the Crows to rebound next year, saying the disappointment of 2013 would help drive the group to improve.
“After making a prelim last year, if you’d said to me we wouldn’t even make finals this season I would’ve said ‘get stuffed’. It was pretty disappointing,” Sloane told Channel Crow.
“We didn’t finish games well. There were a lot of close games that we put ourselves in a position to win, but we let ourselves down. Last year, it was the opposite and we won those close games, so we’ve got to get that mental toughness back.
“The positive was that we did put ourselves in those winning positions and the number of good, young guys we had come through. We got a lot of games into some key young guys, who are going to be huge for us in the future, so we’ve now got that depth moving forward.
“You saw how we turned our form around going into 2012 ...”
Sloane, 23, was part of Adelaide’s senior leadership group for the first time this year.
The influential midfielder said the group had learned a lot from the challenging season.
“It’s always disappointing when you don’t play finals especially being part of the leadership group because you feel as though you’ve let your teammates, coaches and our supporters down,” he said.
“I’d like to think we’ve learned a lot from this season, I know I have.”
Click the play button above to watch the full interview, where Sloaney tips which player to watch in 2013 and reveals which teammate responded to “strong feedback” from the group last year
