Kane Cornes has called for the Adelaide Crows to put their hand up and admit they have a problem with the culture of the club.
This comes in the wake of Andrew McLeod admitting he doesn’t feel welcome back at the club and the response from the likes of Mark Ricciuto and Rod Jameson.
Jameson told SEN that the Crows couldn’t be doing anything more to help past players.
“It was a little surprising (to hear of his comments),” he said on SEN Breakfast on Wednesday.
“He’s an employee at the club and an assistant coach to the ladies team so his actions don’t reflect what he said.
“It’s really surprising, I spoke to Andrew (McLeod) and he feels the way he does which is unfortunate.
“If he wants to speak, he should but from our past players’ perspective, we couldn’t be doing anything better from the programs we have in place and the AFL Players’ Association have recognised that for a number of years."
Similarly, Ricciuto said McLeod’s comments came at a poor time given everything going on with COVID-19 and other issues Adelaide has faced in recent months – Tyson Stengle’s DUI and the club’s Barossa Valley training breach.
"I'm really disappointed in him for saying that publicly, because there's ways of dealing with things and ways of not dealing with things," Ricciuto said on Triple M.
"And this is the last thing the football club needs when they're trying to survive in the biggest financial crisis in the history of football. If he feels that strongly about it, fair enough, speak up, maybe he did it so they'd listen some more.
"Why would he feel like that? He's been a great player, he's a great person, and I know that Rod Jameson does a fantastic job running the past players committee.
"Andrew's not the sort of bloke that goes out and mixes a lot ... I was disappointed for him, to be honest."
Taking into account comments from Ricciuto and Jameson, Cornes has called for both men and the club as a whole to simply put their hand up and admit they have problems to work through.
“I’m strong on this that at some point when you’ve got kids … when they continually get into trouble, when they go to school and get in a fight, your kid comes home and the teacher has a chat to you and says they’ve been in a fight,” he told SEN SA Breakfast.
“Your immediate response is to blame the other kid or it must’ve been the other kid’s fault.
“That’s the first time, that’s your initial reaction. It happens again and you go it’s probably the other kid again, you know, what are these kids doing?
“When it happens seven or eight times and they keep getting into a fight, at some point it’s not the other kid, it’s your kid’s fault.
“And that’s the point Adelaide are at right now. Stop blaming everyone else for the issues and the cultural problems at the Adelaide Football Club.
“This isn’t Andrew McLeod’s fault. Yes, he may have a part to play in it and maybe he hasn’t embraced it fully, but he’s done some work there and has been back to the footy club, it’s not like he hasn’t been back there like Chris McDermott.
“At some point the Adelaide Football Club need to be the parents of this kid who keeps getting into a fight at school and say maybe it is our problem.
“Maybe it’s my kid that is the problem because since 2017, the issues there, the players they’ve lost, the camp, the DUI, the Barossa Valley breach, their communications with the media and their supporters has been ordinary.
“So put your hand up and admit ‘for once, it is our fault’.”