Adelaide Crows great Mark Ricciuto has given some insight into the reasoning behind the club allowing certain players to leave in recent times.
The likes of Patrick Dangerfield, Charlie Cameron, Jake Lever and Mitch McGovern have all left the Crows over the past few years for differing reasons and under varying circumstances.
The Crows board member spoke on his Triple M show Roo & Ditts this morning to go into detail about some of those key departures.
Ricciuto said: “When you’re at the top it’s been hard, absolutely. I’m not hiding behind it.
“Would we like to keep some of those players? Absolutely. Do we miss some of them? Absolutely we do.
“All the people saying, ‘Whack all those players into the current Crows side’. You wouldn’t have Rory Sloane stay and you wouldn’t have had Tex Walker sign at that time. You wouldn’t have Tom Doedee.
“That’s how it works.”
The departed Crows
Patrick Dangerfield
“Dangerfield was never going to stay. We would have paid whatever we could to keep Patrick Dangerfield. But he’s absolutely loyal to and loves Moggs Creek.
“No, it never even got to money.”
Charlie Cameron
“Charlie Cameron was one of few we didn’t want to lose. He got a very, very good contract from Brisbane who were down the bottom of the ladder and had plenty of money in their salary cap.
“We couldn’t match that, absolutely not. This was 2017. When you’re at the top of the ladder and your salary cap is chock-a-block you haven’t got much room to move.
“We didn’t want to lose him, but we lost him.”
Jake Lever
“Got a five-year deal on $800-850,000. Very comfortable that we let him go on that money. He’s probably a $500,000 player.”
Mitch McGovern
“Comfortable that he goes. We love people that contest in the forward line and have got plenty of speed, and we need speed in the forward line, but once again 800-and-something thousand.
“Has he delivered for Carlton yet? No.”
Eddie Betts
“We needed to get some youth into our side. He’s 33. We were comfortable for him to go. That’s not a request to leave, that was a mutual agreement.”
Josh Jenkins
“Very happy for him to go. Once again, age in our forward line. We needed to get some youth into our forward line.
“Very comfortable, we’re even paying part of his contract. Same with Eddie Betts.”
Hugh Greenwood
“That was probably more our call. Everyone says we’ve got the slowest midfield in the competition. You can’t just keep having those players in your midfield and then whinge that you’ve got a slow midfield.
“He’s 28 this year and not going to be playing in our next premiership side, so we’re trying to get draft picks in to rebuild.”
Alex Keath
“Got offered a massive amount of money to go to Western Bulldogs. A large amount of money, more than double than what he was on at Adelaide. That’s what he wanted. If we kept him we would have lost more players.”
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