Fresh allegations of psychological abuse at infamous Adelaide Crows pre-season camp
Adelaide Crows stars were reportedly in tears while discussing the traumatic activities suffered by players during their infamous pre-season camp.
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Additional details have emerged about the Adelaide Crows’ infamous pre-season camp, with fresh allegations about cultural insensitivity and psychological abuse.
After losing the 2017 AFL Grand Final against Richmond, the Crows put the playing group through an arduous camp in an attempt to strengthen the team for a better run the following season.
Unfortunately, the camp backfired with the Crows falling from the top of the AFL to the bottom and becoming the league’s latest laughing stock.
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The Age’s Sam McClure published an explosive report about the camp’s events on Sunday, which were run by Queensland-based consultancy group Collective Mind.
Along with being suurounded by fake automatic weapons, players were told to hurl abuse about episodes of childhood trauma to a teammate crawling towards a combat knife to free themselves from a contraption tied to a tree.
“(Players) were given personal information that the players didn’t think would be shared to use as forms of abuse. That’s what broke some of the players,” McClure told Channel 9’s Sunday Footy Show.
“Once you isolate certain members of the team and break their trust, it’s very hard to get rid of it.
“I’ve had multiple players in tears while talking about what happened on the camp.
“I think to use people’s past trauma they’ve experienced in their lives, use it against them, all for winning games of football is beyond the par.”
"They clearly didn't have an understanding for the cultural sensitivity of what was going on.@sam_mcclure speaks about his eye-opening story which details what actually happened on that infamous Adelaide pre-season camp.#9AFLSFS | Watch @channel9 pic.twitter.com/5LaZWrN3PO
— Footy on Nine (@FootyonNine) July 5, 2020
McClure revealed both of Collective Mind’s managing directors have no official psychology qualifications, which is “fraught with danger”.
“Amon Woulfe and Derek Leddie, who were the founders and the creators of Collective Mind, they were on the camp, and they’re not registered psychologists. They’ve got leadership backgrounds but no psychology degree or qualifications,” McClure said.
“It’s unbelievably dangerous to have unqualified people to go into this field and start to meddle around in people’s minds.”
On the 2017 camp, an Indigenous artefact was used as a talking stick for a group activity, which Adelaide’s four Indigenous players considered insensitive. Instead of resolving the issue, the club allegedly excluded the four players from the program.
“People who don’t have the understanding of the Indigenous culture here in Australia might wonder, ‘What was done, why was it offensive?’” McClure said on Sunday.
“It was the four Indigenous players that were on the camp that said that at the time it was offensive. They then stood up in front of their teammates and in front of their coaches and tried to explain it, and the club’s reaction at the time was, ‘That’s OK, we’ll leave the Indigenous players out of the program, but everyone else can continue to do it.’
“They clearly didn’t have an understanding on the cultural sensitivity of what was going on.
“Three of those four footballers are now gone. Two of them are at other clubs, and (Wayne) Milera’s still there.”
Former Adelaide star Eddie Betts confirmed the disastrous camp was part of the reason he switched clubs to Carlton at the end of the 2019 season.
“There’s a lot of things that went on and a lot of unhappy players,” Betts told SEN Breakfast in March.
“It was a part of it, not a full part of it.”
Crows players were reportedly told they had confidentiality agreements signed on their behalf, and therefore have been reluctant to share what happened on the camp. But McClure believes some athletes could pursue legal action after retirement.
“A lot of the players, for one reason or another, felt like they were not allowed to talk about it, and still feel like that,” McClure said.
“Whether some players decide to go down the legal route when they retire for what happened on that camp is up to them.
“They want this story to be out, but no one wants to be the face of it while they’re still playing.
“When those players retire, they may indeed go down a legal route.
“There’s no doubt, at one time or another, the players will tell their version of the story of what happened.”
Originally published as Fresh allegations of psychological abuse at infamous Adelaide Crows pre-season camp