AFL 2024: Taylor Adams opens up on the hurt he felt after trade from Collingwood to Sydney

Like at GWS at the end of 2012, Taylor Adams didn’t want to leave Collingwood. And what hurt again this time, he says, was how the club – and coach Craig McRae – handled the exit.

Former Collingwood vice-captain Taylor Adams says he was “hurt” by the lack of an exit phone call from Craig McRae as he revealed he felt “cheated” by the hamstring injury that cost him a premiership.

And Adams revealed that the Buddy blindside, which had the Giants believing Lance Franklin would head to Greater Western Sydney in 2013, eventually forced him out of a club where he would have happily stayed.

Adams will play in the cross-town clash against the Giants this weekend after a successful move to Sydney that saw him approaching the Swans to shore-up his financial and football future. But while he lauded McRae’s impact in his two seasons at Collingwood, Adams said the club could have handled his own exit so much better.

He revealed McRae never spoke to him again after a trade-week discussion where he believed the club was “blowing wind up my arse” over his potential on-field role in 2024.

Taylor Adams celebrates a goal against the Hawks in round 7. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

“I was pretty disappointed by the feedback and the transparency that I got from Collingwood throughout the year,” he told the Unlaced podcast.

“In a nice way, they phased me out and it felt a lot like that. I ended up meeting with John (Longmire) and the Swans on the Wednesday and was transparent with John and said, ‘Look, my preferred route is to not move but I’ve got to make a decision in my head because footy doesn’t last forever and I feel like I’ve got some more to offer’.

“I then met with ‘Wrighty’ (football boss Graeme Wright) and ‘Fly’ (McRae) on the Thursday and Fly basically said, ‘Nothing is going to really change next year, we think you do a great job in the role that you’re playing’, and I thought to be honest, he was blowing wind up my arse

“I had to make a decision with my head and I actually didn’t hear from ‘Fly’ at all again which hurt me. He should have called me and had the hard conversation but I can understand why he didn’t as he just won a flag and had a baby and there was a lot going on. I don’t have any hard feelings about it.”

Adams suffered a low-grade hamstring strain mid-September and fell only days short of playing in the Grand Final but would never again take the field for the Pies.

“You have got to be able to put everything into perspective but in terms of my football career and my whole life, that month was from when I got injured to missing out and having to deal with the emotions of that, that was the most difficult period of my life,” he said.

“I felt like I had been cheated a little bit, I tried to look for the reasons why and I couldn’t think why it had happened this time. To play every game bar a suspension and then fall short two weeks before and miss out on the ultimate prize ….

“I needed five more days. I wasn’t going to run out there and test my hammy on Grand Final day. You just know. I wasn’t right. There was no way I was going to put a team in jeopardy.”

Adams and Darcy Moore after Collingwood’s grand final win last year. Picture: Daniel Pockett/AFL Photos

Adams revealed he was hurt by former coach Craig McRae’s silence. Picture: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

Adams was originally drafted to the Giants and only spent two years at the club, but says he was eventually nudged out through a bizarre set of circumstances.

The Giants needed to create cap space to secure free agent Lance Franklin so pulled a healthy offer for a more frugal deal before being shocked to learn the Hawthorn premiership star was headed to Sydney.

“It got to the end of the season in 2013 and I hadn’t really made a decision but the Giants had put a contract on the table early in the year and effectively taken it off,” he said.

“They had a contract sitting there which was half of what it originally was in terms of length of deal and remuneration. I thought that is so strange, I was having a pretty good year.

“I packed my bags and went to Victoria and did some research at the big football clubs, went to Geelong and had a few meetings and made my mind up I wanted to come back to Victoria given the contract status.

“They did it to a couple of players and I was like ‘What is going on?’

“Leon Cameron was the coach and he said, ‘We have sent you a new contract and can you renew it?’ It was back to what it originally was. It was a very competitive deal. And anyway I said to Leon, ‘I think I have made my decision. I want to go to Collingwood,’ and we had it out, not badly, just as a coach he didn’t want players to walk out the door.

“I got on Twitter (now X) 15 minutes later and the Buddy Franklin announcement had happened. So the Giants had basically offloaded some of us young guys to fit Buddy in and I was like ‘I would get rid of myself and five others if I could get Buddy’.”