Doyle ready for GF in career-best shooting form

Featured image: Dan Cowley | @imagesby_dan

Whether it's having Jordan Forbes alongside him or if life as a dad continues to agree with him or just that desperation for an NBL1 Central championship, Adam Doyle is playing as well as ever and is proving quite the lethal shooter in 2026 for the Forestville Eagles.

Doyle might be about to turn 35 this coming off-season but it's not stopping him playing as crucial a role as ever on this Forestville team with lethal 45 per cent three-point shooting in 2026 with him not needing the ball in his hands all the time.

That was an area Forestville felt cost them when it mattered in 2025 so they brought in Forbes and his all-round talents as a guard. The result was a season that saw them claim the regular season championship with a 16-2 record to end up a game clear on top.

They did have a slip up in the qualifying final against the South Adelaide Panthers, but hit back in the preliminary final against the Central Districts Lions to now set up a mouth-watering Saturday night Grand Final with South Adelaide at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

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It sets up a Grand Final that sells itself not only with the Alex Starling-Jeremy Smith match up, but then brash young guns of South Adelaide like Rio Bruton and Lloyd McVeigh against the grizzled Forestville veterans like Daniel Johnson, Doyle and Greg Mays.

It will be the first Grand Final that Doyle will have played in as a father too after he and wife Sarah welcomed son Harvey into the world in May last year.

Things didn’t quite pan out for Forestville on the floor last year even after also winning the regular season championship at 16-2, but now this time around Doyle can let his mind wander what it would be like to celebrate glory with his son.

At the same time, given the Eagles lost to the Panthers two weeks ago to open the finals, he's certainly not overlooking the job still ahead of him and his team.

"He'll be there and I'd obviously be lying if I said I don’t let it enter my mind if the three of us could all celebrate together," Doyle said.

"It'd be good to accomplish something obviously with him there but also you can't get too far ahead and I'll just focus on what we've got to do and what our game plan is, and do that.

"We know if we follow that we'll put ourselves in a good position to get a good result, and then it would be even more special with him and my wife there so we can celebrate a win. But right now, all eyes are just on what we have to do to have a chance to make that happen."

Just wanted to get back to this point

After the team that Forestville had in 2025 with Doyle joined by Greg Mays, Daniel Johnson, Alex Starling and DJ Vasiljevic, and to fall short of reaching the Grand Final meant it was a tough pill to swallow.

But the majority of that group wanted to give it one more crack in 2026, they ended up only making one real change and that was bringing in Jordan Forbes from Sturt to fill that combo guard role instead of Vasiljevic.

The end result was another 16-2 regular season record before then losing another cracking contest in the qualifying final to South Adelaide and hitting back to beat Central Districts last week to now reach the 2026 Grand Final.

Doyle and his team just wanted a chance to get to a Grand Final in 2026 after that missed opportunity of 2025, and now they have at least ticked that off.

"I think as soon as the siren sounded last year and in the game that we lost to West, obviously we were angry and were disappointed, but by that next week everyone just wanted to get back to this point," Doyle said.

"We've done all we can and we recruited over the off-season even though I know we've only really changed one player, but this is the goal we set out to do as we do every year.

"It's good to get there in the end and we did have the hiccup in the first final losing to South but it wasn’t like we played badly.

"We still controlled that game for 36 minutes but sometimes in a basketball game and especially finals it can only take three or four minutes to lose that control and credit to South who were great and deserved to win for what they did down the stretch.

"We know what we did wrong in those last few minutes and we've looked back on that, and worked on those things, and hopefully we won't replicate that now in the Grand Final.

"Then last week against Centrals we didn’t replicate that and we played the way we wanted to after being pretty mad coming off that loss. We were there to do the job done last week and did that to now get another chance against South to be back where we wanna be."

Was probably a battle in three teams

It might be the Grand Final to savour now between Forestville and South Adelaide given the history between the playing groups, and that rivalry they have built including when the Eagles beat the Panthers back in the 2024 decider.

However, it certainly wasn’t a race in two and Doyle wouldn’t have been surprised to see Sturt having added Vasiljevic end up making it or even Centrals after they played in the Grand Final last year and stunned the Sabres in a first semi-final.

But in the end, Doyle is just happy the Eagles have made it for the third time in four years as they attempt to win a second championship in three seasons.

"I think when you look at it now, there probably realistically was three teams that could have got there with us, South or Sturt," Doyle said.

"South have had a great year and have some young guys who are playing really well together and then you throw in Smith who everyone knows what he's like and he's an MVP of the league, leading scorer and can take over a game.

"But he's also that leader and that older figure in that team which is helping young guys and that's something they might have been lacking for a while so they've done really well under Belly as coach.

"They're playing for the love of the game and doing really well. But you throw in Sturt and they had a good season and could have made it too with the team they had and they might be mad at themselves for that loss to Centrals.

"Between any of us three teams and you can even throw Centrals in there too with how well they were playing at the right time so it has been a good season but us and South have been good all year and I'm just glad we're one of the two teams that's ended up in the Grand Final."

Feeling good without changing much

Doyle had a 50 per cent three-point shooting season all the way back in 2014 at the Knox Raiders but that was just on 72 attempts and that was also 12 years ago.

Not since then has he shot close to a number like that but this shooting season he has had with Forestville has been scintillating going at 44.7 per cent from the outside including going 7/7 in a win over Central Districts, and going 6/8 early on against South Adelaide.

He hasn’t necessarily changed too much, but it might just be as simple as the presence of Forbes who can have the ball in his hands more and allowing Doyle to play as a shooter and off the ball more that might be behind how well his shot has been falling.

"I'm feeling good and I haven’t really done anything different or changed much so whether it is having that extra ball handler out there or what, I don’t really know," Doyle said.

"Having those times where I've just had to stand there and hit the open shot has been good for me, but there's a difference between sitting there and being open, and then actually making the shots.

"So that's what has made us that bit extra to guard because teams are now not sort of giving me much space, but that opens up the lanes for Jelly or DJ, or if we throw it in the post to Greg.

"My guy can't help off me when we do that because I'm going to get a shot up and I'm making one of two at the moment.

"So it's been good for the team and obviously I'm happy too with how I'm shooting at this point in my career and whatever I can do to make the team better and win, that's all I really care about to be honest."

Great to have another ball handler

What did stand out in reflection of last season for Forestville was that as good as a line-up as Mays-Johnson-Starling-Vasiljevic-Doyle was, it did leave too much pressure on Doyle to be the main ball handler and playmaker.

That stood out in the preliminary final loss to the West Adelaide Bearcats so now the addition of Forbes has made the world of difference. He has produced 17.8 points, 6.2 assists, 5.9 rebounds and 2.2 steals along the way.

That included just the one triple double against the Southern Tigers, but he threatened that plenty more times and Doyle couldn’t be happier to now have him alongside him in the back court.

"It's definitely been great having an extra ball handler out there on the floor and I think probably last year that's one thing where we got caught out a little bit a few times," Doyle said.

"A lot of teams pressured me all court and especially in that Westies game in the finals, I got pressured full court most of the game and we just didn’t have that other person who could bring the ball up and get us into something.

"That's where Jelly's been great and he's someone who can handle the ball, get us into an offence and then I can play off the ball a bit more.

"He also does a bit of everything where he creates, he can get on the rim, he rebounds, he makes the right pass and he attracts a lot of guys so that's helped me out to just sit there at the three-point line and just worry about making the shot.

"He's definitely an addition that has made a big difference for us and he has fit in great because he's a great guy, a great teammate and obviously a great player so we couldn’t have asked for a better trade there from DJV to Jelly."

Relieved to have Starling as teammate

If you want to tune into the Grand Final on Saturday night for just one thing at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre and you'd be excused if you can't take your eyes off the match up between Jeremy Smith and Alex Starling.

They did win a championship together with South Adelaide back in 2022 but now will be on rival teams with the 2026 title on the line.

Doyle sure is happy he has Starling on his side now for a whole host of reasons.

"I've been on both sides of Starling now and there were those times when he was at South that he would guard myself and I knew what a great defender he was obviously," Doyle said.

"But I would only see him two or three times throughout the year but now having him on your team and seeing him every week at training and in every game, you actually realise why he's such a great defender.

"For his size, he stays with the ball and has the quickest hands I've ever seen and he's just a great defender who reads the play and the ball so well.

"He's a perfect match up for someone like Smith where he's that little bit bigger and stronger, but has those quick hands too so it's definitely good having Alex on our team as someone that can do that instead of myself or someone else having to guard Jeremy.

"They've played together and know each other like the back of their hands so it's always a good battle between them, and they're good friends as well, so it's going to be good to see them go at it."

Living now as a father

As much as Doyle is still enjoying his basketball as much as ever with Forestville, no matter what happens at basketball, he gets to come home to his wife Sarah and son Harvey and everything else just disappears.

Now that Harvey is getting close to being a year and-a-half old, it's been the best time of Doyle's life now getting to enjoy being a father.

"It's great and I love it. It's good to come home whether we've won, lost, had a good game or a bad game or if you're feeling sore or whatever, it just doesn’t matter to him," Doyle said.

"It's always good to come home and see him the next morning and hang out as a family with me and my wife and Harvey. Life away from basketball is always good for the three of us.

"It's been a bit different this year in terms of my wife hasn’t been able to be at every game and he hasn’t been at every game, but at the ones they have been at, it's always good to see Harvey there and with his big smile.

"On the weekend in that Centrals game, coming out of a timeout or a break I would see my wife and him there sitting behind our bench, and just seeing him looking at me and smiling is such a good feeling even when you're in that basketball moment.

"It just makes everything feel more worth it and I love it."