Eddie Betts to leave Adelaide Crows for Carlton: reports
Adelaide Crows fan favourite Eddie Betts is set to make a return to Carlton, it has been reported. But the Crows — and the star — say he is still contracted until 2020 and are yet to hear otherwise.
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Crows veteran Eddie Betts has refused to comment on a report he is about to break the hearts of Adelaide fans and leave the club and return to Carlton.
The Australian has reported this morning that Betts will return to his former club, where he got his start in 2005.
The 32-year-old is said to be desperately unhappy at Adelaide.
When asked about the report at West Lakes this morning, Betts dismissed knowledge of it and said only that he was contracted by the Crows until the end of next year.
A Crows spokesman said on Friday morning the report was news to the club.
“Eddie is contracted until 2020 and the club has yet to hear differently from Eddie or his manager,” he said.
That echoed comments from Crows board member Mark Ricciuto who said on his morning radio show on Friday he was unaware of any Betts move.
“I certainly don’t know anything that he wants to go to Carlton,” Ricciuto said on Triple M Breakfast.
“We had list management yesterday and nothing of that nature came up. But he’s contracted to play for the Crows until 2020 and at this stage that is what will be happening.”
Carlton coach David Teague on Thursday did not close the door on a remarkable reunion with Eddie Betts.
Teague said he would “love” to get cult figure Betts back to Carlton after coaching him at the Crows himself as recently as 2017.
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David Penberthy, who wrote the story in The Australian, said on FIVEaa that it came down to happiness, comparing Betts’ planned move back to Carlton to Patrick Dangerfield’s departure from the Crows in 2008 to be close to his home town.
“It was clear yesterday when we spoke to Ed on the show … that things have changed. In his head, not in the head of the Crows. They haven’t delisted him,” Penberthy said on Friday morning.
“The ultimate driver of human desire is happiness. I remember when Danger quit I went and had a coffee with him at Henley Beach. … he pulled out Google Maps and moved along east along the Great Ocean Rd, past Torquay, to Moggs Creek.
“He scanned it right up and said: ‘This is where my cousin Mike lives, that other house there is my Aunty Ethyl and that little path there is where Mardi and I are building a house and that’s the path I’ll use to carry my surfboard down to the beach every morning’. And you go, ‘Mate I’m there too’.
“With Eddie, he’s on the record as being unhappy. David Teague said it yesterday. The club itself says we need to start having more fun, which is a concession being at the Crows at the moment is no fun. He just wants to be happy.”
Betts is a weekly guest on Penberthy’s radio show. In his appearance on Thursday he deflected questions about his future, repeating that he was contracted with the Crows until 2020.
Fox Footy commentator and Western Bulldogs legend Brad Johnson said a move back to Carlton would be a bold move.
“I don’t know if I could (go back) as a player,’’ Johnson said on SEN SA Breakfast.
“I find that a little bit strange.
“He’s been a star of the competition, he hasn’t played great football this year.
“It’s big decision to make for Eddie and Adelaide, if he comes out and kicks another 50 goals next year, it’s a poor decision (to let him go),’’ he said.
Blues coach David Teague said on Melbourne radio that Betts clearly appeared unhappy in Adelaide after being dropped in 2019.
“Personally, I love him,” Teague told RSN radio.
“I spent three years at Adelaide with him and he’s a really close friend so I’m biased.
“This is where the list management side of things will come in.
“I’m a close friend and love him as a person. It’s hard for me to talk from a football club point of view.
“I still think he can play some really good AFL football and I hope wherever he plays next year he plays that he with joy again and has fun, he looks like he’s not having fun.
“Where he’s at we need to get him having fun again”
The Advertiser earlier reported that Tony Modra and Tyson Edwards had implored the club to keep the star pocket rocket at West Lakes next season.
Modra said Betts’ ability to “bring fans through the gates’’ should not be overlooked in any discussion about his importance to the club.
“I would definitely be keeping Eddie Betts at the Adelaide Football Club,’’ Modra told The Advertiser.
“He showed enough this year to suggest he could easily fulfil the final year of his contract.
“Forget pushing him up the field, just stick him in a forward pocket, close to goal and let him do his business.
“He’ll still take a main backman because defenders know how dangerous he can be and I’ve got no doubt that he would still be a valuable player for the Crows for at least one more year.’’
Betts, who has kicked 600 goals in his 316-game career, has one more year to run on the three-year contract extension he signed with Adelaide in 2017.
But with the Crows — who have the second-oldest list in the competition — going through a transitional phase after missing the finals in consecutive years following their 2017 grand final loss, there has been suggestions Betts could be traded to a rival for draft picks.
The brilliant small forward has had interest from the Gold Coast Suns for next season, as well as Carlton.
Betts has played the past six seasons at the Crows, kicking 310 goals in 132 games, leading the club’s goalkicking in four consecutive years from 2014-17 and earning three All-Australian selections.
But he was kept goalless six times this year and was controversially dropped for the round 18 clash against Carlton at the MCG.
Edwards, who ranks second in games at Adelaide with 321 from 1995-2010 and played in the club’s 1997 and ‘98 premiership teams, said the Crows “should definitely keep Eddie’’.
“He wasn’t at his brilliant best this year, which was understandable given he is in his 30s, but he was still reasonable and still appears to have the energy, fitness and dangerous look around goal to warrant at least playing out his contract,’’ Edwards said.
“He also brings the other stuff, people through the gates, the fact supporters love him, he is a likeable guy and does a lot of great work off the field.”