Collective Mind owner Amon Woulfe says it’s impossible to quantify the damage from the Adelaide Crows’ notorious pre-season camp.

Woulfe’s business has lost clients, its reputation has been ridiculed, and he still gets hate mail.

“Who knows what the cost is. I know it’s high,” Woulfe told AAP on Wednesday.

“I prefer not to think about it most of the time, to be honest.

“It’s not an experience I would wish on anyone … and it hasn’t just been one wave, it has been waves and waves and waves.

“It’s a horrible experience.”

Woulfe, co-owner of Collective Mind with Derek Leddie, said the supposed story of the Crows’ 2018 pre-season camp “started in fantasy”.

“Players half-naked, blindfolded, driven to the centre of Australia listening to the Richmond theme song on repeat for 24 hours … it didn’t even begin close to reality,” he said.

“And it has just gone into the stratosphere since then.

“It’s too good a story. It sells too many newspapers.”

But the supposed story is wrong, Woulfe said, which was proven by SafeWork SA’s findings from its investigation into the January 2018 camp.

SafeWork SA found the Crows and Collective Mind didn’t breach any work health and safety laws.

The findings, released on Tuesday, mirror results from other investigations into the camp by the Crows internally and the AFL’s Integrity Unit.

“It’s incredible how long this has gone – I don’t think anybody involved ever thought it would turn into what it has turned into,” Woulfe said.

“It has just gone on and on.

“How many times do we need to rake the coals and look at this – investigations internally (by the Crows), by the AFL, by the (SA) government – before we just go ‘enough’.

“They can’t all be wrong.”

Collective Mind has sued Nine Entertainment, publishers of The Age, for defamation over its reporting of the camp, which followed the Crows’ flop in the 2017 grand final.

The Crows, scorching hot favourites, were beaten by Richmond by 48 points in the premiership decider.

Adelaide’s then coach Don Pyke and then football manager Brett Burton asked Collective Mind to oversee a camp the following pre-season.

“This is the first preseason camp that I’m aware of anywhere in the world that was focused on the mind and on the heart and not the body,” Woulfe said.

“Usually, it’s just carry logs up hills, and run.

“So it was different, definitely different.

“It was a very big progressive step from Brett Burton and Don Pyke, they saw the value in this space.”

Pyke quit as Adelaide’s coach in September 2019 while Burton was sacked on December 2019 in a move linked to the fallout from the camp.

While some players such as Taylor Walker and Rory Sloane praised the camp, others – including Indigenous players Eddie Betts and Cam Ellis-Yolmen – said the camp hurt the club’s culture.

Betts, who departed Adelaide for Carlton at the end of the 2019 season, said last year the camp left a “a lot of unhappy players”.

Ellis-Yolmen, who left Adelaide at the same time as Betts for Brisbane, believed the camp contributed to the Crows missing the finals in 2018-19 but said rumours about what happened were “far from the truth”.

Former Adelaide midfielder Bryce Gibbs, who joined the Crows for the 2018 season, labelled the camp a “disaster”.

But Woulfe, asked why the pile-on the aftermath, replied: “I don’t know if anyone knows … God, if I could answer that question.”

Richmond in 2017 were doing similar mind training, he said.

The Tigers publicly credited part of their success with what was called HHH sessions.

Richmond players and staff opened up to each other on three topics – hardship, highlight, hero – to create deeper personal bonds which would, in turn, heighten on-field connections.

“Look at the other dressing room on (2017) grand final day and what are Richmond doing,” Woulfe said.

“They were very public about their triple H sessions and working on vulnerability and connection and training the mind.

“They were doing the exact same stuff that we (the Crows) were doing.

“The only difference is, they won.”

AAP

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