Adelaide's proud chairman Rob Chapman openly acknowledges the loss of Phil Walsh remains "raw and emotional" for many at the Crows, as they seek to finish the AFL premiership journey that in many ways began with the late coach's appointment in 2014.

Red-eyed and visibly affected by the team's advance to a first Grand Final since 1998, Chapman reflected on the decision to choose Walsh as coach after his many years as an astute assistant with Port Adelaide and West Coast, setting in motion a cultural change at Adelaide that was then given the sternest test imaginable by his stunning, violent death, 12 games into 2015.

Those desperate hours after news of Walsh's death filtered through to Chapman, the chief executive Andrew Fagan, the club's players and staff were marked by a deliberate choice to be open and honest about the mess of emotions and thoughts swirling around the Crows. Adelaide is a place where frank communication -- "man conversations", Walsh called them -- and openness are vital planks of the club, both in dealing with Walsh's death and in striving to win a first flag in two decades.

"We made some decisions really early, probably a bit of training in my executive career and Andrew's executive career kicked in," Chapman told ESPN. "We made a decision in the first few hours - just be open, be honest, tell people as much as we know, you can't over-communicate in these situations, we've got a lot of stakeholders.

"I think we did it as well as we could, probably wouldn't change much in all of that. But it's still raw, it still hurts, still emotional, but none more so than [Walsh's wife and daughter] Meredith and Quinn and the family and friends of Phil. They're always in our thoughts, and we'll make sure we look after them now too.

"I'm just incredibly proud. Everyone involved with this football club, everything everyone's gone through, endured, and to come away now ... we go to Victoria, we go to the MCG and we play in a Grand Final. It's been tough, but overwhelming pride, and a little bit of relief too. The supporters, the members, these boys genuinely play for them."

Dotted around the Crows' rooms after their Friday night win over Geelong were numerous figures who played key roles in building the club back up from the traumas of 2015. The former captain and board director Mark Ricciuto who first raised the possibility of Walsh, the assistant coach Scott Camporeale who stepped in as caretaker and helped guide the Crows to the finals that year, the captain Taylor Walker, singled out for the job by Walsh and now the league's most admired leader, and the senior coach Don Pyke, who returned to Adelaide after a decade to carry on the task of moulding an elite team and game style.

"Praise and recognition is not something the community always does very well, but I won't miss anybody," Chapman said. "If we're fortunate enough to win next week - and even if we don't - I'll be making sure that we recognise the contribution everyones made along the way. And there's a lot of people in other clubs who've assisted, been part of it, and I won't miss them either.

The late Phil Walsh is credited as one of modern footy's great tacticians. Morne de Klerk/Getty Images

"Resilience is a behaviour and an attitude that you do learn. Given what we've been through, you do learn to become strong and resilient and toughen up. You've got to get back on, you've got to keep doing it and you can't stop. We're lucky to have a coach like Don Pyke, lucky to have a leader like Andrew Fagan, and it's not just the two of them, it's everybody here. This is a real team effort, something Pykey's emphasised from day one, and it's something we live to."

The evenness of contribution across Adelaide's playing list is testament to that attitude, demonstrated adeptly on Friday night by who the team adapted to the losses of Brodie Smith and Mitch McGovern while retaining their speedy, attractive brand of football. Pyke's method draws to a degree on the manner of play first used by Neil Craig when they worked together in 2005 and 2006, emphasising a high level of fitness and swift transition from defence to attack. The difference this time around is that the Crows have fostered a truly enviable forward line, in which Walker, Eddie Betts, Charlie Cameron, Tom Lynch and Josh Jenkins work admirably off one another.

"One of the things I think we've improved immensely on over the course of this year is to believe in ourselves, have the confidence to take the game on," Chapman said. "We've been there, we've learned a lot, and we've applied those learnings and got better at it.

"That style of play, that game plan is hard to execute, it's really hard, and if you don't do it well you get caught out and you get smashed. But the boys are confident, they've been getting better for two years and there's still room for improvement. We're going to have to be at our best next week, but we won't change the game style."

While the game style will not change, the club itself has done so. The decision to appoint Walsh followed two years of underachievement, when the gains of 2012 - which had also followed several underwhelming seasons - were not capitalised upon. There was the Kurt Tippett salary cap saga, which cost the club priceless draft picks - and the departures of numerous players just as they were hitting their peak, namely Phil Davis, Jack Gunston and Patrick Dangerfield.

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Track back to 2014 and Chapman's board were subject to plenty of scrutiny from supporters across South Australia, who questioned whether the club was truly geared towards the winning of premierships, or simply to keep ticking over somewhere vaguely in the top half of the AFL ladder. That year saw the exits of the coach Brenton Sanderson and the longtime chief executive Steven Trigg, replaced by Walsh and the former ACT Brumbies chief Fagan, respectively. Chapman remembered those days of change.

"There were things in our football club that weren't right several years ago," he said. "We set about being part of the solution and not part of the problem, and we fixed it. But it doesn't happen overnight, we've probably been on this journey for four or five years, but if you get the right people in the right jobs, doing the right things, you will eventually get there.

"Bringing Andrew on board, bringing Phil on board, bringing Don now on board, but not just them There's lots of people who are sometimes nameless who add so much to this team effort. I was reflecting on it yesterday, we had a board meeting and it is a good team. We need to keep them together, and if we keep them together we'll have some sustained success.

"You mull over things, it's in that environment you trust each other and respect each other and nothing's off the agenda, and as a consequence you make better decisions. Collectively I know we've made hard decisions, getting rid of some people, but that's what good clubs do. If you're consistent in that, consistent in your philosophy, you'll get there."

Much of that philosophy started with Walsh. Saturday will mark the end of a journey in which his significance will not soon be forgotten.