Michael McGuire: Adelaide Crows 2018 training camp exposes why the club is so unsuccessful

The Adelaide Crows is one of the AFL’s most unsuccessful clubs – and the infamous 2018 camp is just one example why, writes Michael McGuire.

If you want to know why the Adelaide Crows are such a routinely unsuccessful football club, then the past week or so would answer most of your questions. It’s all there.

The arrogance, the lack of transparency, the refusal to admit responsibility, the insularity, the lack of leadership, the poor management, the self-satisfaction. It’s a long-running theme at the club that can be traced all the way back to its first season in 1991. It’s there in the club’s motto: “The team for all South Australians.’’

The Adelaide Football Club likes to style itself as one of the competition’s behemoths, but the reality is that it’s shot through with mediocrity. If you doubt that, have a look at the scoreboard. Two premierships in more than 30 years. No premiership at all in 24 seasons. For a club with the resources of Adelaide, that’s a shameful performance.

Since the Crows’ mens team last won the competition in 1998, the only clubs not to win a premiership are the Gold Coast, Carlton, the Giants, Fremantle and St Kilda. That’s not a flattering list.

Famously, the Crows did make a grand final in 2017, but were belted by Richmond. Adelaide that day looked like a team that thought the game was in the bag and expected to win just by turning up. Or maybe by doing the “power stance”. In the old footy parlance, they got ahead of themselves.

Former Adelaide Crows player Eddie Betts in Port Lincoln. Picture: Matt Turner

Which brings us to the now infamous camp of 2018 when the Crows, as an organisation, went looking for answers to that collapse. But instead of undertaking an honest assessment for the reasons behind its grand final performance, which should have examined the club’s culture from top to bottom, chased the “magic beans” approach instead.

More than four years later that decision still haunts them. Partly because of the ludicrous and dangerous nature of the camp itself, but mainly because Adelaide and its management pursued its usual policy of deny, deflect and cover up. And not just publicly this time, but to its own players as well.

The long-building pressure valve was finally released last week when Eddie Betts published his book. Among other things, Betts told of his distress when confidential information he had released to the camp’s organisers was then used to humiliate him in front of teammates. Betts’s story was backed by Josh Jenkins, who also felt betrayed by the camp and the club. Bryce Gibbs later spoke out, saying “it just shouldn’t have happened”.

Josh Jenkins, who played for the Crows, then moved to Geelong. Picture: Michael Klein

Gibbs said in a radio interview on the weekend that the camp “ended careers’’.

“The backlash it’s had for guys mentally, you can’t erase that from your memory,” he said.

Of course, the few defenders of the camp point to the multiple investigations that cleared the Crows. Investigations such as the one carried out by SafeWork SA, which said no rules had been broken. But until SafeWork releases the parameters of its investigation and the report itself, it’s impossible to know how seriously to take its finding.

The AFL conducted its own investigation. Surprise, surprise, it cleared the Crows. That’s an outcome that is entirely impossible to take seriously because the AFL owns the Adelaide Football Club. It also appoints 80 per cent of the club’s directors. The AFL was essentially investigating itself.

AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan last week apologised to Betts for the trauma the camp inflicted. Which was odd because Betts told the AFL four years ago about the camp.

But that’s typical McLachlan. It’s a relief he’s leaving the AFL. It’s been an undistinguished reign and a fresh approach is urgently needed. Someone who can break through the boys’ club mentality that pervades the AFL. Someone who can return the game to the fans. Someone who doesn’t appear to believe that Victorian interests are always paramount.

His treatment of Betts was similar to his approach with another Indigenous champion in Sydney’s Adam Goodes. McLachlan’s reluctance to condemn the racist booing of Goodes contributed to the dual Brownlow medallist walking away from the game. McLachlan did apologise eventually, but as with Betts, it was too little, too late.

And there’s likely to be more stories coming. Lawyer Greg Griffin says he has been inundated with calls and has more than the seven people he needs to lodge a class action against Adelaide and the AFL.

Adelaide’s problem has always been that it is a big fish in a small pond. It was formed as a de facto state team at a time South Australia was in a dark place economically after the collapse of the State Bank.

Maybe it’s time for some humility from the AFL and the Crows. The apologies so far have been weak, vague and unconvincing. There’s still the sense that those responsible still want to sweep the whole sordid affair under the carpet. Or as football director Mark Ricciuto (And how is he still in that job?) said he hopes Betts is “getting over’’ his camp experience. He also said the club had acknowledged the camp “wasn’t handled perfectly’’.

Really? The camp was a disgrace. It needs to properly listen to Betts, to Jenkins, to Gibbs. Until it fixes the internal cultural and institutional problems that led the club’s leaders to allow such a camp to take place, it’s hard to see how Adelaide can be taken seriously as a football club.