SACKED podcast 2024: Former Crows football manager David Noble speaks out about the infamous Collective Mind camp

In the latest SACKED podcast, David Noble had left the Adelaide Crows by the time of their infamous camp in 2018 and says he would never have let it happen. LISTEN NOW.

Former Adelaide football boss David Noble believes if he had stayed at the Crows he would have prevented the disastrous leadership camp fiasco of early 2018 that brought down the club.

In the return of the award-winning Sacked podcast series, Noble revealed he had knocked back the same group (Collective Mind) who ran the Adelaide camp when it presented a proposal to the Brisbane Lions at a similar time.

Noble spoke in depth about his rise from a two-game AFL player with Fitzroy to taking on key football roles at Adelaide and Brisbane before a short-lived stint as senior coach of North Melbourne ended in his sacking in 2022.

LISTEN: Press play below to listen to the David Noble ‘Sacked’ podcast

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In the podcast, he also opened up about the 3am phone call in 2015 that rocked him - and the entire game - when he was told that Crows coach Phil Walsh had been stabbed to death.

Noble had departed to be Brisbane’s football boss by the time the Crows went on their controversial 2018 pre-season camp, which was run by Queensland consultancy group Collective Mind.

Many Crows players, including Eddie Betts, were critical of its methods in a sour aftermath that lasted for several seasons.

Yeah, I spoke to those guys,” he told Jon Ralph and Glenn McFarlane on the Sacked podcast series.

The Crows’ 2018 season spiralled after the controversial Collective Mind camp. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

“They wanted to do some work in Brisbane and I said no. It’s easy for me to say no (I wouldn’t have allowed it at Adelaide), but with my experience when they came and approached us at Brisbane, I said no. So that’s why I would say I am in that bucket.

“They came and spoke to me about similar things, working through goal setting and different ways of tracking brain waves that weren’t scientifically available to be able to do that.

“I had a guy who was working with me who was a doctor and I said, ‘Can we do this?’, and he said, ‘No, it’s bulls***’.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that’s what I am sensing’.

It’s probably too easy for me to say, no, I wouldn’t have done it, but only in the sense that I had that experience with a couple of conversations with those guys and I said no up there. I told them that I didn’t have the money to spend on the program.”