Adelaide Football Club — Case Study
Changing the strategy at Adelaide Football Club; the inside game of resilience, mindfulness and the creation of a humanistic, positive, supportive environment to create not just talented footballers but great people - a culture of high performance accountability and positivity.
With the new appointment of coach Don Pyke in 2016 and GM of high-performance, Brett Burton; Griffith was engaged to review aspects of the culture as an initial strategy to ensure the normal approach to a football club environment was transformed. The shift to needed results included developing the inner aspect of human potential, the mental approach to resilience, by utilizing mindfulness and meditation.
So as not to be a ‘fringe part’ of players’ development this was presented and implemented as the cutting edge of future football, where Adelaide would be a leader.
By putting the meditation into the players training schedule they gained a powerful program for energy recovery to ensure sustainability and positivity.
As with all organisations, the real opportunity for differentiation is in human development, the ability to tap into self-confidence, belief, positivity and high levels of energy and resilience.
Testimonials —
“It has been fantastic. We have built a program around the mental side of the game and meditation and mindfulness is one component of that. Players, after some early scepticism have embraced it and a lot of them are practising regularly and they are finding it very beneficial towards their performance and how they recover. It is now a part of their program.”
“I think the Success Without Stress Meditation Program an technique has been hugely beneficial. When I came back to the club at the start of 2016, one of the things I wanted to bring to the Adelaide Football Club was meditation.
Meditation has provided a level of calmness and an environment where we are more solution-orientated, rather than getting agitated with each other. Meditation has allowed a platform where everyone is on the same page and is solution-minded and void of too much stress as they are in that mindset of being calm & relaxed. It is certainly helpful to the environment and it makes it more enjoyable.
We now have an environment where people are aware; of their emotions and how it affects others. They are aware of the impact that it has in terms of getting to where we need to get to.”
The Results
Griffith has implemented the program over the last two years and the results have been internally outstanding with the program implemented across the club to the executive employees and players.
2016
The program implementation started in 2016 and Adelaide Football Club, achieved its highest result in game one in 2016.
2017
AFC finished second on the ladder. Adelaide played in the 2017 Grand Final match, the first grand final for AFC since 1998.
Video Interviews
Video interviews with Adelaide Football Club's coaches and plaers about the organisations’ experiences with the Griffith Consulting and the meditation program.