I don't feel welcome: AFL great's brutal swipe at former club
Adelaide great Andrew McLeod says he doesn't feel comfortable walking back into his AFL club.
McLeod, who won Norm Smith medals as best-afield in the Crows' two premierships, says he and some of his retired teammates don't feel welcome at the club.
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"I'm one of those guys that if you asked me if I felt comfortable walking back into the football club, I would say no," McLeod said on a podcast he co-hosts with retired basketball player Brett Maher.
"It's one of those things, and I have had this conversation with a lot of my old teammates, that it's not a place you feel welcomed."
McLeod is Adelaide's games-record holder, playing 340 matches in a decorated career highlighted by the 1997-98 premierships and winning three club champion awards.
"You see lots of guys go back to their footy clubs and feel welcomed ... for me, the Crows doesn't really have that vibe," he said on the Bunji and Brettster podcast.
"It doesn't have that vibe where you're really welcomed here ... it's not a place you feel like it embraces you as a past player."
During his playing career, McLeod infamously fell out with long-term teammate Tyson Edwards in a feud which embroiled their wives and tennis star and Crows fan Lleyton Hewitt.
Hewitt, a long-time No.1 ticket-holder at the Crows, had been a friend of McLeod until the tennis champion released a DVD containing footage of the pair at Indigenous sacred sites.
"Seeing myself on something like that was just embarrassing. It was so bad," McLeod said in his biography, Black Crow.
Dispute destroyed McLeod’s friendship with teammate
McLeod launched legal action over the use of the footage and Edwards' wife Mandy supported Hewitt in affidavit in a matter ultimately settled confidentially out-of-court.
"I said to Tyson, 'why would you put a friendship that you and I have had for over 10 years in jeopardy and why would Mandy go into court against us and talk about something she knows nothing about?','' McLeod wrote in his book.
"They (the Edwards') basically chose a four or five month friendship over a 10-year relationship.
"We just couldn't believe it.''
McLeod and Edwards didn't speak to each other for a year from 2005, despite remaining on-field teammates.
At Adelaide's 2006 club champion awards, Mandy Edwards threw a drink at McLeod's wife, Rachael.
"Things got really ugly,'' Mrs McLeod said in the book.
The McLeods expected Crows hierarchy to respond to widespread publicity over that incident but officials remained silent.
After retiring from playing in 2010, McLeod, an AFL hall of famer, has managed the Crows' Indigenous programs and also assisted the club's AFLW team in 2018.
The Crows have been contacted for comment.
