Brad Crouch

Bradley Crouch (born 14 January 1994) is a professional Australian rules footballer playing for the St Kilda Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL).

He was recruited by the Adelaide Football Club with the second selection in the 2011 mini-draft.

He is the older brother and former teammate of Matt Crouch.

Crouch and his family are from Beaufort, near Ballarat in Victoria.

Playing for Vic Country in the 2011 AFL Under 18 Championships, Crouch was named in the Under-18 All-Australian side as a half-back flanker.

After this, he was drafted a year earlier than usual under the 2011 mini-draft rules, and was not permitted to play in 2012.

Instead, he played for West Adelaide in the SANFL.

However, he did get special clearance from the AFL to play one pre-season game for Adelaide against the Brisbane Lions in Alice Springs.

During the season he injured his hamstring and missed out on two months of football.

Despite playing a major role in the 2013 pre-season, Crouch did not play in the Crows' first game for the season.

After impressing in the SANFL, Crouch made his AFL debut in Round 2, 2013, against the at the Gabba.

After struggling with hamstring injuries early in the season, he played the last 10 games in succession, immediately establishing himself as one of the club's premier midfielders, and winning an AFL Rising Star nomination in round 14 after a breakout performance against which included 31 possessions and a game-high 6 tackles.

He finished second in the Rising Star award to then Gold Coast youngster and current Fremantle midfielder Jaeger O'Meara, and also won Adelaide's Emerging Talent Award.

At the end of 2013, Crouch signed a three-year contract extension, keeping him at the Crows until the end of 2016, and his brother Matt Crouch was drafted in the 2013 AFL draft to join him at the club.

Crouch continued to struggle with injury over the next couple of years.

In 2014 he suffered a fractured leg in the round two Showdown, which allowed his brother Matt Crouch to make his debut the next week.

The two brothers played together at senior level for the first time in the SANFL for the Crows' reserves side in Round 9 when Crouch had recovered from his latest injury.

He returned to the AFL side in Round 15, coincidentally for the next Showdown, and went on to play the final nine games of the year, before a foot injury prevented him from playing a game in 2015.

After Crows star Patrick Dangerfield left the club to play for, there was pressure on Crouch to help fill the void in the club's midfield in 2016, compounded by the fact that there were still question marks on whether his body would stay fit enough to play consistently.

Even worse for Crouch in the pre-season, he was dropped to the reserves before the season had even begun for disciplinary reasons.

He was able to make his way into the senior side for the first round and played well, but he was pulled from the side in Round 3 due to hamstring soreness.

This injury forced him to stay out of the side for two weeks before he returned to the reserves side with an impressive 36 possessions and 10 clearances.

He returned to the AFL for the Crows' Round 7 clash with the, but was dropped from the side again two weeks later.

His form improved over the next month in the reserves and he forced his way back into the side in Round 14.

He again recaptured his best form towards the end of the season, playing the final 12 games during which he averaged 25 disposals.

Crouch suffered a hamstring injury in 2017 that ruled him out of the entire pre-season and put him in doubt for round 1 of the regular season.

He played in the SANFL for the first few rounds of the season due to concerns that he would struggle in the AFL after missing a large amount of the pre-season.

His SANFL form, 40 and 31 disposals in back to back games, warranted his return to the AFL side in Round 5 against the Gold Coast Suns, where he amassed 22 disposals to half time and 33 for the match in a 67-point win.

His form continued to improve, as did his brother's. In the Crows' Round 18 match against, Crouch fractured his cheekbone in the third quarter, but fought through the pain and played out the rest of the match.

He had to have surgery and missed out on the next game.

In the final round of the home and away season in the last AFL game ever played at Subiaco Oval, Crouch and his brother needed a combined 60 disposals to break a record for the most disposals in an AFL season by brothers, previously held by Kane Cornes and Chad Cornes from cross-town rivals.

By half-time, they already had 50 disposals between them.

They passed the Cornes brothers late in the third quarter and had a total of 87 disposals by the end of the match, making the new record 1,202 disposals.

He finished the season playing in the 2017 AFL Grand Final against, which the Crows lost by 48 points.

After missing the entire 2018 season with a groin injury, Crouch went on to become one of seven Crows to play all 22 games in 2019.

He averaged 30 disposals a game and won the Malcolm Blight Medal as the Crows' best and fairest.

Crouch received a season-high 18 of a possible 20 medal votes in Adelaide’s win over Richmond in Round 13, collecting a career-high 43 disposals, 11 clearances, six inside-50s and four rebound-50s.

Crouch averaged a career-best 30.2 disposals (ranked eighth across the AFL home and away season) and finished second at the Club for clearances and tackles with totals of 117 and 111.

The midfielder also made 86 inside-50s - the most of any Crow that season - to go with 11 goals.

Despite speculation during the season that Crouch would reject new contract offers from Adelaide and ask for a trade to another club, he accepted a four-year extension worth approximately $2.4 million towards the end of the season, keeping him at the club until 2020.