Mark Duffield: ‘Sorry’ comes four years too late for Eddie Betts and teammates after Adelaide Crows camp

What makes Eddie Betts’ words on Adelaide’s infamous pre-season camp ahead of 2018 so powerful is that they are indisputable. They are Betts’ version of the truth. They are: “This is what I heard. This is what I saw. This is what was said and done to and around me. This is how it made me feel.” Other players may have had a different experience of the camp. But this was Betts’ experience, made public by excerpts from his book. Former Adelaide forward Josh Jenkins has followed Betts with his own, equally damning version of events from the camp. As the old telemarketing ads would say: But wait, there is likely to be more, with lawyer Greg Griffin circling with the offer of a class legal action. It is a hand grenade thrown in the middle of the sewing circle formed by the AFL, the AFLPA, the Crows and SafeWork SA. If it has blown up in their faces, it is what they deserve. Hopefully it has cleared whatever was blocking their eyesight. These bodies, all of whom have a stake in the welfare of players at the Crows, looked at the camp, declared there was nothing significant to see and that we should all move on. The main reason we find Betts’ revelations so shocking now is that they were not properly dealt with then. There are elements of disrespect to Indigenous culture in this but do not mistake this as a purely Indigenous issue. As Betts himself has pointed out, non-Indigenous players were among those upset by the camp. Jenkins is just the first of what are likely to be more examples. This is an AFL club’s recklessness laid bare. Some have questioned Betts’ motives in raising this. Do not make that mistake. Betts, one of the AFL’s most loved and admired players, retired at the end of 2021 which means that publishing houses would have clamoured for his story and that story would have been put together in the months leading up to this – ahead of the Fathers Day and Christmas sales markets. A book about Betts was always likely to be written and any story about Betts was an absolute certainty to contain an account of Adelaide’s camp. This was not a strategically placed time bomb planted by Betts. This was a land mine left unexploded by the grossly inadequate actions of the bodies that should have dealt with it four years ago. And while apologies flow thick and fast now, Betts, Jenkins and all other Crows aggrieved by the camp have the right to question whether they are meaningful “sorrys” or just necessary damage control. Yet again the AFL, which purports to be the keeper of the code, looks more like a convenience store when it comes to integrity – conveniently sweeping this away, smothering that, spinning this and that. 24/7. Always open to convenient compromise. The AFLPA increasingly looks like a body that is present when it doesn’t need to be and absent when it should be present – like at Essendon 10 years ago as well as Adelaide four years ago. The AFLPA needs a firm reminder: Its sole reason for being is to protect the welfare of players. Concerns about the camp needed to be treated like tennis umpires treat line calls. If the ball is 99 per cent out, it’s still in. If most of the Adelaide players had no concerns with the 2018 camp but some had serious concerns, that still made the camp a serious problem. The Crows are yet another football club who disappeared down the silly rabbit hole of believing there were quick and weird ways to make the team better, instead of working long and hard and getting their players to work long and hard at getting better. They are not alone in recent history: Essendon with their 2012 supplements program, Melbourne who copped a massive fine despite a finding of not tanking in 2009 (more AFL convenience), West Coast who tried to sit on and suppress the behaviour of a section of their player group only to have it explode from under them at the end of 2007… the list goes on. The Crows are already dealing with a public relations disaster and if it emerges they acted to suppress parts of this fiasco, you can re-write disaster as catastrophe. All clubs need to stop “one size fits all” practices and adopt “first do no harm” philosophies with their entire staff, not just their player groups. It’s hard to imagine what the Crows were thinking. Even in the 2017 finals series, when they lined up for the national anthem in the power stance: Did anyone think Damien Hardwick, Dustin Martin, Alex Rance, Trent Cotchin and Toby Nankervis were going to go to water in the face of a line of blokes who looked like they were impersonating Lego soldiers? Sounds like nonsense, doesn’t it? Because it was.