Caroline Wilson has spoken publicly for the first time since Nine Media offered a public apology for a story she wrote alongside Sam McClure regarding the infamous Adelaide Crows pre-season camp.
High performance consultancy firm Collective Mind released a statement saying that they had been cleared by SafeWork SA of any breach of health and safety laws and that the media company and journalists had acknowledged the camp was run in good faith and with the players’ interest front of mind.
Nine retracted 13 stories written between 2018 and 2021 and paid for their legal costs.
“The whole saga has been disappointing, to be honest. This was an unbelievable story that involved the Adelaide Crows,” Wilson told the Don’t Shoot the Messenger podcast.
“The Adelaide Crows have had an interesting time since they lost the Grand Final to Richmond in 2017, a year they were favoured to win the flag, they capitulated appallingly, they went to the Gold Coast for a camp run by a group called Collective Mind.
“I’ve got to be very careful about what I say, but in the two years that followed that Grand Final loss, most of the assistant coaches left the club, the senior coach left the club, the CEO is gone, the Chairman is gone, the Head of Football is gone.
“The majority of the Crows’ indigenous players have left the club and we know as a matter of record that they had issues with the camp and a lot was written and spoken about that camp and obviously for a variety of reasons the Crows have had a lot go wrong at that footy club.
“A difficult time for the media, and if you go back and read the acknowledgment, which followed an investigation I think by the workplace watchdog in South Australia, I don’t think any money changed hands except I think Nine Media covered the legal costs of Collective Mind.
“If you go back and read the acknowledgement and the statement from Nine Media, I think News Limited have turned this into something else, which is probably not surprising, they’ve gone for the individuals, which happens.
“News Limited are famous for when other organisations win awards, they tend to complain about those awards and this is given they’ve certainly targeted Sam McClure which is really disappointing.
“Sam McClure is one of the best young footy sports journos in the country. He’s done brilliant work over many, many months and several years, he won the Alf Brown award for football journalism last year along with me for a completely separate story, he’s a gun.
“He will go on from this and I’m not going to say much more.”
Listen to the podcast below:
Gerard: Do you regret writing those stories?
— Sportsday (@SportsdayRadio) February 7, 2022
Sam: No.
Sam and Gerard discuss the Crows camp apology. pic.twitter.com/t2jPZa9JGa