The Australian Football League will investigate claims by former Carlton coach Mick Malthouse that former Sydney Blues forward Eddie Betts "had already been secured by Adelaide 18 months before he left Carlton," according to Greg Denham of NEWS LIMITED.
Betts played his last game for Carlton in the '13 semifinal loss to Sydney, but The Australian reported a week earlier "he would join the Crows on a four-year deal" worth A$2M.
Under AFL rules, players "cannot sign with a rival club while under contract" and the league said that it would probe Malthouse’s allegation.
An AFL spokesperson: "We would make an inquiry to see if we need to do anything that would require us to investigate further." Malthouse claimed present Carlton CEO Steven Trigg, who was the Crows CEO in '13, told him Betts was "stitched up" long before he moved to Adelaide. Trigg "had a different version of his comments at a Carlton list management meeting and emphatically denied Malthouse's claims" (NEWS LIMITED, 5/27).
PERSISTENT ISSUE: THE AGE's Jon Pierik wrote a club-based report given to AFL chiefs has found that while the attitudes of players have improved, there is still "a racism issue treading under the surface." The comprehensive study, conducted over three years by lead investigator Sean Gorman, of Curtin University, and Dean Lusher, of Swinburne University, "shows that all the AFL players and coaches interviewed understand that player-to-player vilification is unacceptable." It said, "The vast majority of the players and coaches were able to critically engage with issues of direct vilification and definitely saw it as a thing of the past" (THE AGE, 5/26).
