Why key Crow should “walk out” and join Victorian rival

Reilly O’Brien should leave Adelaide and would fit in perfectly at Geelong, says Kane Cornes.

The Crows made the call mid-season to drop the 28-year-old ruckman as part of their attempts to salvage their struggling season.

As a pure ruckman, O’Brien certainly gets his hand to the ball having won 104 more hit-outs than the next highest ruckman in Tristan Xerri, despite having played two fewer games this season.

Cornes believes he would have every right to depart the Crows given they used him as the “scapegoat” for their struggles.

“He should walk out of the Adelaide Football Club,” he told SEN’s Sportsday.

“They dropped him and he was almost a scapegoat for some of their poor performances this year, Adelaide.

“They replaced him with Kieran Strachan who’s 28 and not the future of the club and O’Brien was made out to be the problem.

“I think he has every right to walk out. I think he’d be an excellent pick up for a team like Geelong. You know exactly what you’re going to get.

“I think he’s an underrated mark around the ground, he’s an incredibly hard-working player who sets high standards and would fit in perfectly and he’d have a good five years left in him and you’d get him reasonably cheaply.

“If I was Geelong, that is the first phone call I would be making and I reckon it would have been made six months ago knowing how the Cats work.”

O’Brien, who won the 2020 best and fairest, is contracted to the Crows until the end of 2025 and has played 119 games for the club.