Age reporter Sam McClure loses award over story on Adelaide Crows

An Age sports reporter has had a prestigious media award ‘annulled’ after serious issues emerged over coverage of a 2018 Adelaide Crows training camp.

Age reporter Sam McClure says ‘Caro (Wilson) and I spent a lot of time talking to people and working on what we thought and still believe is a really important story’. Picture: You Tube.

One of the nation’s most prestigious sports media awards has been stripped from an Age journalist after the newspaper was forced to issue multiple apologies in relation to a story about the Adelaide Crows’ controversial 2018 pre-season AFL training camp.

Sam McClure, author of the article that won the 2020 Quill in the sports news category, had his award “annulled” last week after the Melbourne Press Club’s board voted unanimously to rescind it.

The move to strip a journalist of a media award is extremely unusual in Australia; it is understood neither the Walkleys – the media industry’s most celebrated national awards – nor the Victoria-based Quills have ever retrospectively cancelled a winners’ trophy.

The decision to strip McClure of the honour is likely to set a precedent for other journalism awards bodies, some of which have previously granted significant honours to stories that have subsequently been discredited.

MPC runs the Quill Awards and The Australian understands the board discussed in detail whether McClure should keep the honour for his July 5, 2020, front-page article, “The camp that shattered a football club” in light of the newspaper’s apologies.

Age reporter Caroline Wilson

Ultimately, the board voted unanimously to strip McClure of his award, given the newspaper’s print and online apologies, and the fact that the article in question had recently been removed from all of Nine Entertainment’s news websites, including The Age.

The extensive apologies followed legal action taken by the Queensland-based high-performance mindset training specialists who ran the camp, Collective Mind, and its operators Derek Leddie and Amon Woulfe.

The pair took defamation against McClure and The Age’s former chief football writer Caroline Wilson, as well as Nine and the The Age over serious allegations relating to what the players were put through while on the camp.

The articles were published in print, online and broadcast on TV, including on The Age and Wide World of Sports websites.

The Age issued an apology this month to Collective Mind and its operators.

“The Age acknowledges that the camp was run in good faith and with the players’ interests front of mind,” it said.

“If the article was read to suggest otherwise, The Age withdraws that suggestion.”

An independent probe conducted last year by Workplace investigator SafeworkSA found no health and safety breaches occurred at the Adelaide Crows’ camp.

Nine agreed to remove 13 articlesrelating to the camp published between 2018 and last year by McClure and Wilson.

The MPC board also agreed the 2020 Quill in the sports news category would now be awarded to the category’s highly commended entrant, Herald Sun sports reporter Michael Warner, who wrote an exclusive article, “Danny’s tragic secret” about the late AFL legend Danny Frawley’s battle with a crippling disease linked to repeated head knocks.

McClure spoke out on Nine’s 3AW Sportsday segment last week amid the fallout surrounding his tainted Quill award.

Age editor Gay Alcorn

Broadcaster Gerard Healy asked him: “Do you regret writing those stories?”

McClure responded: “No”.

“Caro (Wilson) and I spent a lot of time talking to people and working on what we thought and still believe is a really important story,” McClure added.

Wilson also spoke out last week on the podcast, Don’t Shoot the Messenger, saying: “The whole saga has been pretty disappointing, to be honest. This was an unbelievable story that involved the Adelaide Crows.”

Woulfe and Leddie questioned McClure’s and Wilson’s comments.

“We feel very disappointed by how disingenuous these public comments by Sam and Caroline appear, given they are not within the spirit nor the intent of the agreement that was signed by all parties,” they pair said in a statement.

Shortly after The Age published its first apology over the award earlier this month, McClure tweeted: “Winston Churchill: The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is”.

It’s understood McClure was instructed to delete the social media post, and did so a short time later.

Age editor Gay Alcorn said the paper was not consulted before the MPC made the decision last week and she contacted them in writing on Sunday to dispute the outcome.

“Discussions with the Melbourne Press Club are ongoing,” she said.

“The settlement with Collective Mind was a business decision, reached on a no-admissions basis.

“It would be an unfortunate precedent if journalism awards were annulled in these circumstances.”