A knife, a harness and the ‘power stance’: Eddie Betts reveals ‘cult-like’ training camp | LatimoreJack
Former AFL champion Eddie Betts has revealed for the first time the trauma he felt after a “weird” and “completely disrespectful” leadership training camp he attended as an Adelaide Crows player in the 2018 pre-season., to be released on Wednesday, the three-time All-Australian player says the secretive four-day camp held on the Gold Coast, run by a group he has chosen not to name, left him feeling “like a piece of me was brainwashed”.
“There was all sorts of weird shit that was disrespectful to many cultures, but particularly and extremely disrespectful to my culture,” Betts writes in the book. The red flag for Betts was when the interviewer tried to gain Betts’ confidence by claiming familiarity with Aboriginal culture: “He tried to make out as though he was like me, as though I should feel comfortable disclosing to him my trauma.”Then 30 years old, Betts, who was part of the Adelaide club’s senior leadership group, says he was told the camp would do more than just invigorate his game-day performances.
“Apparently, our facial expressions weren’t up to game mode,” Betts writes. The playing group was made to practise their facial expressions, he says. Betts says the first thing they saw was a dozen or so burly men, all dressed in black, greeting them with the power stance.“Things like, we weren’t allowed to shower ... we had to stay sweaty and smell ‘manly’. We also had to keep what they described as ‘noble silence’,” Betts writes.
At the end of the camp, the players were told that this exercise had provided each other with a safe space and that any issues affecting them were only to be shared with other group members.
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