Crows fans deserve full disclosure, not silent treatment, on Collective Mind camp
IGNORING a crisis will not solve it. And while Graham Cornes backs the Crows on its preseason camp, he writes the club’s refusal to address and refute the allegations, some of which have been ridiculous, has only fanned the furore.
- Williams slams Crows over camp
- Collective Mind washes hands of Crows pre-season camp
- Greenwood praises healing qualities of Crows camp
- Don Pyke opens up about season’s regrets
- AFL integrity unit looks at controversial Crows camp
I MUST declare from the outset that I am an official Crows ambassador. I want nothing but the best for the club.
Because when the Adelaide Crows are flying the whole state lifts. Regardless of whether you support the Crows or not, there is a palpable buoyancy that sweeps the state when they are winning and challenging late into September.
We saw it last year — that combination of pride, optimism and elation. Of course it ended in bitter disappointment but on balance, against expectations, it was a good year. Not so this season.
We all expected the Crows to be up there again, fuelled by the disappointment of the grand final loss and the lessons that they should have learned from it. How silly were we?
Or perhaps it was the players and the coaching staff that were silly.
Coaches trust players to do the right thing but when those players returned from their end-of-season break in less than satisfactory condition the alarm bells should have sounded. Then the injuries.
You can plan and work to condition the body to play the game and to prevent injury, and while there is plenty of speculation that the Adelaide’s sports science personnel failed in that department, many injuries are simply bad luck.
Let’s say it was bad luck.
The now infamous Collective Mind training camp has become an over-hyped factor. What should have been only a distraction has now, even though the season is finished, become a crisis. It’s a crisis bordering on scandal.
This matter should have been put to rest months ago but it continues to fester simply because of the poor way the club has managed it.
Ignoring a problem or a crisis will not solve it. The club’s refusal to have its leaders publicly address and refute the allegations, some of which have been ridiculous, has only added to the furore.
Port Adelaide’s season was just as disappointing but that club’s leaders fronted the football world immediately their season was over and answered every question put to them.
Collective Mind has been just as a bad. Holding a press conference to defend their brand after Adelaide’s season was over was understandable but that press conference was cut short before all the issues had been addressed. Since then they have refused all requests for interviews. Why?
The main Crows/Collective Mind detractors have come from the Victorian media but when Mark Williams told the FIVEaa audience of some supposed alarming acts, even those of us who believed that those stories emanating from the camp were simply wild destructive rumours, started to doubt our belief in the club.
What they had been telling us privately was wildly different to the “informed” opinion of the interstate media.
We expected Chairman Rob Chapman and coach Don Pyke to clear the air at the club’s Malcolm Blight Medal presentation. Instead, despite Pyke’s genuine emotion, we got empty rhetoric.
The club’s official response to requests for more information is that if they respond to every allegation “the next one next week will be even more outlandish”. So we get silence and an inability to defend the club against those allegations.
Among the call for heads to roll and the occasional hysteria that drives talkback radio, we often get sensible, considered responses. One such caller asked last week, “What is it you really want from the club”? A good question. Who are we to call for “good people” to be sacked?
What we really want is full disclosure.
We want to know what really happened. We want the club to defend itself and to refute the allegations. We want them to name and shame the detractors. For to maintain a silence indicates guilt.
Ironically, everything I personally have heard about that camp from people who are close to the players who were there has been positive. That is totally at odds with the interstate journalists who want to purvey more destructive rumours.
For example. The father of one of the young players who attended the camp told me his son knows nothing about any of his team-mates being tied naked to a tree. His main concern was football-based and centred around the development program of the club’s youngsters and the effectiveness of feedback to the club’s younger recruits.
Not one of the more outlandish allegations of the Victorian media has been substantiated by any player who actually attended the club. Still there is silence from the club — apart from their unsuccessful attempts to control the narrative via certain board members’ friendships with media entities such as Wayne Carey.
While the AFL and the AFL Players’ Association have maintained there is “nothing more to see here”, the suggestion persists that, based on a highly critical report from the club’s doctor, the AFL is reviewing the matter.
I’m prepared to give the club the benefit of the doubt that it is waiting on the outcome of any statement from the AFL before responding officially.
Failing that, the club can no longer hide behind a strategy of silence hoping that the matter will in time disappear.
The club’s leaders simply must front the media, answer those questions, and most importantly expose the muck-rakers for the mischief-makers they are.
The club’s paid-up members and the hundreds of thousands of others who follow the club at least deserve that.