Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks baulks at predicting just when his AFL club can return to the promised land - finals.
"The famous question, the 'f' question," Nicks told reporters on Monday after signing a contract extension to remain as coach of the Crows until the end of 2024.
"You're never that bad and you're never that good is one of my mottos.
"The game turns really quickly.
"One year you can be winning seven games and the next year you can be fighting it out."
Adelaide were wooden-spooners for the first time in the club's history in 2019 in Nicks' first year in charge with just three wins and finished 15th with seven wins last season.
Nicks described his contract extension as "a small thing in the bigger scheme of things".
"It's not relief, it's excitement to now be part of the medium-term future than just the short-term," he said.
"But in saying that, we have been in conversations right throughout the stuff we're doing with the footy club both on and off the field - it's tracking in the direction it needs to.
"I'm really confident the people we have here at the moment are going to take us forward and we're going to see success sooner rather than later.
"From a personal point of view it (the extension) gives me some confidence that we're heading in the right direction and I am part of that.
"It's amazing what some confidence can do for an individual.
"But at the same time, it also gives my coaching group, our players, a feeling of empowerment. We feel like we're all together, we're going forward.
"I am confident that with everyone on the same page that success will be here before you know it."
Adelaide chief executive Tim Silvers said the club was rapt to secure Nicks, who joined the Crows after stints as an assistant at GWS and Port Adelaide, on a longer deal.
"Nicksy has been our coach for the last two years and there have been some challenging times, COVID times," Silvers told reporters.
"But what we have seen in that period is genuine improvement - improvement in our team, improvement in our list.
"There is a genuine buy-in from our players, our coaches, our staff and the total administration so I feel like he is the right person to take us forward.
"He is going to build some sustained success and we thought it was the right time to back him in as a leader."
Australian Associated Press
