FIVEAA’s David Penberthy says Andrew McLeod’s comments that “something is wrong” at the Adelaide Crows are hurting the club and are difficult to understand given the “generosity showered” on him by Adelaide FC.
Speaking on Friday’s FIVEAA breakfast show Penbo said he had a “different view with this” and would “say what I think” despite his wife Kate Ellis being a board member at the Adelaide Crows:
“I think McLeod’s getting pretty out of line with all of this,” Penbo said. “I think there’s a degree of ingratitude there and I know how hard people are working at the club right now to keep the club solvent, to keep it there as something so many people love in South Australia.”
“Clearly Bungee has got some sort of personality clash that is at the centre of this, but that club has paid him and his wife a helluva lot of money for the past few years and that’s now dried up because of the pandemic. He’s taken a pretty significant haircut like so many other people. I don’t know what else is behind it but if feels like something else is behind it.
“This is hurting the club. This is going to make people less likely to say ‘keep my membership money’ and there’s a hell of a lot of people working their arses off for nothing at the moment at that football club. It looked a bit cute to me coming out and using the ‘here’s my podcast, you can hear all about it’.
“The whole indigenous program has got millions of dollars in there. He’s basically been in charge of that. The club says, hey mate, please run this, we’ll get your wife a job too. I don’t know how you can have such generosity showered upon you and turn around and say I don’t like these people.”
LISTEN:
On Thursday McLeod doubled down after earlier this week saying he didn’t feel welcome at his old club.
He said in a statement read out on the podcast he hosts with Brett Maher:
“When you walk into the Adelaide Football Club, it’s not a particularly warm place, they’ve taken most of the old photos down, the boardroom is like an old office you’d find around,” he said.
“These rooms should tell you a story of and about the history of the people who came before us to lay incredible foundations, but no, everything has now been catalogued and if you want to see them, you have to go online to view them.
“I know I’m not alone, because in the past 24 hours, I’ve had a lot of these conversations or messages from a number of my former teammates, past officials and many of our great supporters.
“That confirms to me that something is wrong.”
LISTEN TO McLEOD’S FULL STATEMENT HERE
