David Penberthy: McClure and Caro deserve much of the credit for turning a molehill into Mt Everest

The histrionics coming from the people who stuffed up the Crows story are powerful enough to propel a Melbourne tram, writes David Penberthy.

It is interesting – and as a journalist depressing – to contrast the woe-is-me stylings of Sam McClure and Caroline Wilson with the dignified silence of the men who actually lost their jobs in part because of the Adelaide Crows camp fiasco.

I love being a journalist but I hate my profession at times. I hate its self-absorption and bombast. Of course I think journalism is important, but there is no reason for the self-importance it invites. I am amused by the way people who are writing a mundane story carry on like they’ve exposed Watergate.

I hate media award nights, so perfectly skewered by the satirical comedy Frontline, all those faux celebrities congratulating each other through gritted teeth on their win, then muttering the word “prick” to themselves when the trophy holder wanders off to find someone new to gloat at.

Sam McClure is interviewed on the Sunday Footy Show.

The histrionics coming out of The Age newspaper are powerful enough to propel a tram the length of Collins St. Not for the first time, something quite unremarkable happened this month in the world of journalism. A story was exposed as a massive beat-up. The people damaged by it won an apology, compensation and a full take-down of the yarn.

Normally the journos responsible for this would keep their heads down, punch in a few desultory beers with their closest friends and come in Monday trying to find a story that’s actually correct. Not so with Sam McClure and fellow camp case prosecutor Caro Wilson, the pair thrashing around like they’re the biggest victims of this whole affair.

Here’s a few names I’d throw into the mix for victimhood status. Don Pyke. Andrew Fagan. Brett Burton.

While there were various reasons behind the departure of these men, that infernal camp played a role in the demise of each of them, especially the former coach in Pyke and chief executive in Fagan.

I am not defending the camp either. I think the problem with the camp was not what (allegedly) happened on it but the fact that it happened at all. I write this as someone with a pathologic loathing of work retreats, off sites, planning days, huge cynicism towards the modern cults of wellness, corporate psychology, and anything with the word “holistic” in it.

I think it was dumb to risk making the players feel like they were being punished, or that there was something mentally wrong with them, when they were already gutted at having lost the most important game of footy they’d ever played.

I am also not disputing that some of the stuff that happened on the camp struck a sour note, such as the misappropriation of Aboriginal culture in training exercises which upset the Indigenous players.

I would also say that the club, which has historically been secretive and media shy, could not have stuffed up the crisis management side any more if it tried.

But in the club’s defence, that latter point was made much worse because the camp story lacked so much precision that it effectively became a clearing house for any old rubbish that a mate of a mate had heard from his cousin last Thursday at the Seaton Hotel.

What happened on the camp became the stuff of Big Footy forums, front-bar talk, and drunken post-match phone calls to FIVEaa. Very quickly, the camp sounded like a cross between Salo and The Manchurian Candidate, and the paralysed club didn’t know how to deal with it because they never really knew what the precise allegations were, and where the next lot were coming from.

For that, McClure and Caro deserve much of the credit for turning a molehill into Mt Everest, all from the vantage point of Victoria where they took great delight taking pot shots at a club which many of their Melburnian number can’t stand.

My wife is a member of the board of the Adelaide Football Club and I say that not just as a declaration but because I want to share a story that I find repellent and which stems from the let-it-rip environment created by the original hysterical reporting.

I was told by someone last year that on this camp a player was subjected to a sexualised act which, if true, would have placed the club at risk of criminal charges.

Being less interested in getting a story than preventing my wife and her fellow board members from going to jail, I passed the information on to her, and she promptly contacted all the key people, and the player himself had to be spoken to as well.

Collective Mind chief Derek Leddie. Picture: Dylan Robinson

It was hugely distressing for him, it was hugely distressing for the board members, none of whom get paid a cent for the many, many hours they work, and it made the club look like it was run basically by a bunch of morally bankrupt sickos. It was of course a total bloody lie, invented by someone with an axe to grind with the club, passed around the rumour mill until it made its way to me and God knows who else.

So the upshot of all this now is that a whole bunch of people left the Adelaide Football Club, the club endured years of ridicule and distraction, but the person we are meant to feel sorry for is the bloke who wrote the beat-up and wants his award back?

Spare me.

In his now deleted tweet, Sam McClure showed the opposite of contrition and pitch-perfect journalist self-importance when he posted this Winston Churchill quote after Nine Media was forced to apologise: “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

I’d opt for another slightly reworked quote, borrowed again from the very funny people at Working Dog productions: Get your hand off it, Sam. You stuffed up. Dust yourself off, come in Monday, and try to write something accurate.

Originally published as David Penberthy: McClure and Caro deserve much of the credit for turning a molehill into Mt Everest