Former Adelaide Crow Josh Jenkins has opened up in detail on the club’s infamous pre-season camp back in 2018.
In a lengthy statement, Jenkins backs up former teammate Eddie Betts’ version of accounts and says the club “completely fell apart” in the aftermath of the camp.
Betts and Jenkins are the first two players from the club at the time to speak out against the camp some four years later.
It was investigated by WorkSafe SA at the time, while the AFL integrity unit also looked into the matter.
Both bodies found no violations.
Speaking further on SEN’s The Run Home, Jenkins detailed how the AFL integrity unit came to investigate.
On the topic of why details have taken so long to come out and why no complaints were made, the 33-year-old revealed he raised the initial complaint with the league.
“I did make a complaint. With my manager… we initiated the integrity investigation, I’m happy to disclose that,” the former forward said.
“We went to the AFL, I met with them in a hotel in Melbourne, and I left there disheartened that not much was going to happen.
“I don’t really want to say much more than that, other to say… we initiated the investigation only after deciding, ‘well, it’s not going to get handled in-house’.
“So we went to the integrity office at the AFL, I met with a man and a woman… in a hotel in Melbourne… and put it this way, I wasn’t feeling great about it.”
When Betts’ explosive allegations came out in his biography released earlier this week, AFL Players’ Association CEO Paul Marsh admitted they were “disturbing” and “news to (him)”.
However, Jenkins says he approached Marsh - who has been AFLPA CEO since 2014 - later in the year of the camp to urge him to investigate.
It follows a similar account from veteran journalist Caroline Wilson, who says she called Marsh on “countless occasions” about the camp and told him to talk to the present players.
“I confronted Paul Marsh at the 2018 AFL MVP awards at the end of the season, after a long season,” Jenkins added.
“I said to him, ‘you need to dig deeper, you need to find out more, it’s not right’.
“I’ve had strong conversations with him or along the way with others. Danger (Patrick Dangerfield) and I got in an argument about it. I wanted him to speak from the Players' Association's point of view, I said, 'I don’t want you to be my friend, I want you to tell me from their point of view'.
“Their view is, 'we need to know all the details, we needed a complaint'.
“My view would then be to change your guidelines. Find a way to be able to say we can smell something is off. Everyone in the world could smell something was off, but they weren’t able (to investigate), and I take them at face value for that, that they didn’t have the power to do that, they don’t have an integrity office, they don’t have that lever to pull.
“That probably is something that needs to be looked at from their point of view.”
Crows CEO Tim Silvers apologised to Betts and players affected earlier this week, while AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan also said sorry to those who have suffered from the camp.