Crows coach Matthew Nicks defends club for waiting to publicly disclose Stengle’s drink driving offence
Crows coach Matthew Nicks says a lack of information was the reason the club waited a week to publicly reveal a young forward had been caught drink driving.
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Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks has defended his club for waiting a week to publicly disclose forward Tyson Stengle's drink driving offence.
The Crows handed Stengle a four-match ban and slapped him with a $2500 fine on Monday after police stopped him for driving an unregistered car in the early hours of April 9.
The second-year forward also recorded a blood alcohol reading of 0.125 after being stopped by police.
Speaking on SEN SA Breakfast on Tuesday, Nicks said the reason for releasing a statement eight days after the drink-driving incident was because of a lack of information the club had.
Nicks described the penalty as “harsh” but said it was handed down based on a level of trust being broken.
“In hindsight you look back, could we have come out with a short statement,” Nicks said.
“We didn’t have a lot of information early and that’s why we didn’t.
“The decision we ended up making from a games point of view was more based around the time it took for us to find out and actually get to the bottom of the detail.
“That’s the most disappointing part.
“We work around a performance and trust as a priority — trust being the number one I’m really big in that space.
“From our point of view it’s all about being open and honest with each other.
“We felt going forward it (the penalty) was appropriate.”
Nicks was confident Stengle would learn from his indiscretion.
“‘I’m not huge on punishments, to be honest,” Nicks said.
“I’m more about the learning that can come out of it.
“(But) we feel like Tyson will be a better person and player for it, he’ll come out the other end no doubt.”
The AFL has been suspended until at least May 31 amid the coronavirus pandemic and Nicks coached his first AFL game for Adelaide on March 21 before the league was halted.
Despite a return date still being unknown Nicks said the club would come out of it “better and stronger”.
“It’s challenged us in ways that we obviously couldn’t have predicted.
“We had a disappointing incident with Tyson last week.
“But there’s a lot of good stuff going on in our club at the moment off the field because everything we are doing is obviously off the field.
“We’ve got players dropping things off on door steps, a couple of our senior guys have been looking after their teammates.
“It’s been fantastic the way our group has been able to get around each other without physically being around each other.”
Originally published as Crows coach Matthew Nicks defends club for waiting to publicly disclose Stengle’s drink driving offence