Inside the ‘weird’ and ‘disrespectful’ training camp that robbed Eddie Betts of his passion for football – صحيفة الصوت

AFL champion Eddie Betts has opened up on the notorious Adelaide Crows camp, revealing he lost passion for football after the “weird” and “disrespectful” experience.

Betts, who retired last year after a glittering 350-game career, has detailed the significant fallout from the Crows’ 2018 pre-season camp in his autobiography.

Ahead of the release of The Boy from Boomerang Crescent on Wednesday, excerpts of the eagerly-anticipated book have emerged via Nine newspapers.

Betts, an Indigenous icon and one of the AFL’s greatest small forwards, has claimed the group — which he chose not to name in the book — running the camp misused personal and sensitive information.

“There was all sorts of weird shit that was disrespectful to many cultures, but particularly and extremely disrespectful to my culture,” Betts wrote in the book and published in The Age.

“Things were yelled at me that I had disclosed to the camp’s ‘counsellors’ about my upbringing.

“All the people present heard these things.

“I was exhausted, drained and distressed about the details being shared.

“Another camp-dude jumped on my back and started to berate me about my mother, something so deeply personal that I was absolutely shattered to hear it come out of his mouth.”

Betts said what happened at the camp on the Gold Coast and the group’s involvement with the club impacted on his mental health and form during the 2018 season.