When Graham Cornes was appointed as the inaugural coach of the Adelaide Crows, he began with nothing.
“At the start of October 1990, there was a chief executive and nothing else really – no officials, no equipment, no anything," Cornes said on Zero Hanger's AFL Team Builders Podcast.
“We just got straight into it, but we didn't have any equipment or facilities, really. I made a specific request to use Football Park [to train on] but the groundsman there was very precious and we didn't get a lot of access to our home ground.
“Then the first night we didn't have any balls. We had to race around and ended up pinching some of the under-18 squad's footballs to get our first night underway."
Despite the lacklustre facilities, the inaugural Crows squad trained relentlessly with no complaints.
"The guys showed up. They trained harder than they'd ever trained," Cornes added.
With such short time to develop a game plan, Cornes noted that if the newly-formed Crows were to compete with the seasoned AFL sides, his men would have to be the fittest. Immediately, Cornes implemented a training program that covered 13 days out of every fortnight during the summer.
It included a training regime that bested Carlton's "benchmark" fitness training of 100-metre sprints.
"[Carlton] had to do 100 sprints, they had to do it in 18 seconds and they had a 42-second rest, so it's a one-minute turnaround. So we said look, we're gonna do 110, it's 10% more, we're gonna do them in 17 seconds and you're gonna have a 35-second break, so it's a 52-second turnaround.
"It was a realisation when they completed it that they were as good, if not better in terms of fitness [than current AFL clubs]."
To find out how Adelaide fared in their debut match, watch the fourth episode of AFL Team Builders, where inaugural members of the Adelaide Crows – coach Graham Cornes, CEO Bill Sanders, and player Mark Bickley – take you through the challenges of the successful creation of the first V/AFL team in South Australia.
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Podcast: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Hosted by Niall Seewang
Produced by Phoenix Trinidad