Adelaide Football Club coach Matthew Nicks was left “shattered” and “seeking learnings from the situation” on Tuesday after a club dictionary intervention revealed that “learnings” — a word he has used in press conferences an estimated 4,000 times since 2020 — does not, in fact, exist.
The revelation reportedly came during a routine review session, when an assistant coach gently suggested the word Nicks was looking for was simply “lessons.”
“I’ve built my whole process around learnings,” Nicks told reporters, visibly rattled, standing in front of a whiteboard that had the word “learnings” crossed out fourteen times. “We take the learnings, we own the learnings, we build on the learnings. If learnings isn’t a word, then what have we even been doing at training?”
Club sources say Nicks spent the remainder of the afternoon locked in his office, reportedly muttering “it’s a growth word” to himself while flicking through a thesaurus he’d been given as a Christmas present in 2019 and never opened.
Adelaide great and part-time club ambassador Mark Ricciuto attempted to console Nicks via phone, telling him, “Mate, don’t pay any attention to them. Most of these halfwits don’t even think ‘irregardless’ is a word either.”
A club statement released later that evening confirmed the Crows “won’t spend too much time on it” and would be “seeking clarity around the learnings of the learnings situation in due course,” suggesting the word will continue to be used “irregardless” of its legitimacy.
Long-suffering members were largely unmoved. “Given the amount of learnings we’ve done this year I’d say most of those boys should be in line for MENSA membership,” said one member outside Adelaide Oval, draining the remainder of his West End Draught like it was milk.
At time of publication, much like his attitude towards Adelaide’s most disappointing losses in 2026, Nicks had reportedly moved on and was focused on making sure all the boys had a good laugh at training.
The Crows next face a side they will almost certainly describe as “a really big challenge” and a “full of star players,” regardless of their ladder position.
This will be a work on for Matthew moving forward.
