Tension at the COWS

[Grim Reaper]

Ah these pathetic losers at the Adelaide COWS.....could not happen to such a pathetic group of deadbeats.

Real-life soap opera
October 14, 2006

NO ONE is quite sure where, when or how the real-life saga of Footballers' Wives began at the Adelaide Football Club.

It depends on which story in the "she said-she said" battle between Rachael McLeod and Mandy Edwards has greater currency.
No account - in the two-year soap-opera that also embroils Australia's leading tennis player, Lleyton Hewitt - ever matches up. Not even closely.

Take the night the Crows hailed their first 300-game player, Ben Hart, with his testimonial dinner at the Entertainment Centre on June 3.

Mrs McLeod and Mrs Edwards - wives to two of the club's cherished players, Andrew McLeod and Tyson Edwards - verbally clashed.

Listen to the storyline pushed by the Edwards backers and the account is: Rachael McLeod was upset about being usurped by Mandy Edwards in the Hewitt wedding party and as godmother to the Hewitts' daughter.

"You have stolen my life," Mrs McLeod is alleged to have said to Mrs Edwards, a sister of former Crows greats Andrew and Darren Jarman.

The counter claim is that Mrs Edwards mocked, not for the first time, Mrs McLeod with the suggestion she "get a life".

Not letting that gibe pass without a comeback, Mrs McLeod responded: "I have one, stop trying to steal it."

The same applies last Friday night in the after-party to the Crows' club champion count that flowed from the dance floor at the Convention Centre to the Swish nightclub across North Tce. Step into the Edwards' corner and the story is that Rachael McLeod flexed her left thumb and left index finger over the head of Tyson Edwards to make an "L" symbol, meaning "loser". Edwards had finished second - by 36 votes to Simon Goodwin - in the Malcolm Blight Medal count.

And then the sparks fly - or, rather, shattered glass - after Mrs Edwards throws her drink over Mrs McLeod.

Move across to the McLeod corner and the story is very different.

It is alleged Ken McGregor's girlfriend, siding with Mrs McLeod, takes issue with Mrs Edwards' part in the saga that has clearly divided the so-called "WAG" (wives and girlfriends) set.

As an argument develops, Mrs McLeod steps forward to lend support to McGregor's girlfriend.

Mrs Edwards allegedly makes remarks about Andrew McLeod (who was not nearby), Mrs McLeod answers back, Tyson Edwards joins in, Mrs Edwards throws her drink on Mrs McLeod and smashes the emptied glass and . . . the bouncers step in.

Now the Adelaide Football Club has a real problem. The much-whispered feud is public and beyond trading insults.

For much of the past two years the gossip has been easily deflected by Adelaide's usual policy of issuing denials against every hint of a problem.

They had covered up the tension from the 2004 Brownlow Medal count. Here is another tale with two versions.

The Edwards backers claim Mrs McLeod clapped at the table late in the count when the votes dried up for Tyson Edwards, putting him out of reach of medal winner West Coast captain Ben Cousins.

The McLeod sympathisers say Mrs McLeod was applauding her husband polling best-on-ground votes in Adelaide's Round 22 clash against West Coast in Perth.

After this year's Brownlow count - where Mrs McLeod, with the infamous body art of Andrew's No. 23 sparkling across her back - slipped away from the Crows table after the count to socialise at the Port Adelaide table, the controversy deepened.

These stories from one camp that are then denied by the other have left Adelaide officials in a spin and careful not to choose sides.

It has reached the point that the club, in an official statement released to The Advertiser on Thursday, says: "The club wishes to remind everyone that there are always two sides to a story . . ."

Mrs McLeod and Mrs Edwards declined to comment after approaches from The Advertiser.

Adelaide's masking of an issue it maintained was private and not affecting the football team succeeded until the Hart testimonial dinner. Even then, it was more than a month before the biggest chat item among AFL football was the McLeod-Edwards saga.

On the Qantas flight from Adelaide to Launceston - where Port played St Kilda - on July 22 there was not a Power player not talking of how McLeod and Edwards had a cold rapport on the football field.

On their portable computers they had even isolated a piece of video where they suggest Edwards and McLeod avoided each other in a play.

The next week former Geelong forward Billy Brownless put all in the public domain while hosting a program on Melbourne radio station SEN.

The Adelaide Football Club made its standard denial, particularly to claims that mediation had been attempted not once but twice. But this collapsed when McLeod - who has strived to break the mould of footballers hiding behind cliches and club-written scripts - appeared in his regular television spot on Channel 9 on August 6.

He played down the saga, saying: "There's not too much of an issue at all."

McLeod then emphasised it was not a problem between the players. "There is no problem with Tyson and myself at all," he said. Edwards, in a separate press conference, also confirmed mediation had been tried.

So where does this all lead to now?

THE CLUB: It has a difficult issue that could fracture the club and destroy all coach Neil Craig has sought to establish in the past two years.

With the club and the two warring families agreeing - for the first time - to enter counselling there is hope of finding peace.

THE PLAYERS: Both have contracts with Adelaide for next season. Both are in Adelaide's leadership team, for now. Both want to stay at Adelaide.

But McLeod's mood, first in the way the club handled his new two-year contract and now how others have sullied his wife's name, has left him scarred.

This prompted Craig - using a borrowed car to mask his movements - to visit McLeod on Wednesday night to assure him the club would not take sides.

At the same time Craig does not have to visit the Edwards family which is interstate on holidays.

Can McLeod and Edwards - often room-mates during interstate matches in the late 1990s when McLeod noted "Tyson doesn't snore too much" - play in the same team?

McLeod, in his Channel 9 appearance on August 6, suggests: "Not too many people in any workplace get along as well as they'd like to. It's hard in a footy club when there are 42 blokes and you have to get on with everybody. There's always a lot of personality clashes and stuff like that."

Indeed, Port won the 2004 AFL title with players who avoided each other off the field - as Edwards and McLeod will do at Adelaide.

THE WIVES: There is a clear and deepening divide in the "WAG" pen that will make seating arrangements at AAMI Stadium and at club functions more testing than ever.

It has been noted, with more than curiosity, that Mrs Edwards sits directly behind and above Mrs McLeod in the pen at West Lakes.

Counselling is designed to ensure both Mrs Edwards and Mrs McLeod can be at the same event and avoid a repeat of last Friday's stoush at Swish.

HEWITT: At the start of the season chief executive Steven Trigg asked McLeod - whose friendship with the tennis player was shattered last year amid a legal fight over the use of Aboriginal land sites in Hewitt's DVD - if there would be a problem with bringing the club's No. 1 ticketholder in the changerooms.

McLeod - who had lived with Hewitt after both sportsmen split, respectively, from wife and girlfriend (in Hewitt's case, Flemish tennis pro Kim Clijsters) - made no protest.

He has repeatedly said - and often laughed at - how this saga is related to Hewitt and the suggestion the tennis pro has fractured the Crows.

As the McLeods have moved away from Hewitt, Tyson and Mandy Edwards have been closer to Hewitt and his wife, actress Bec Cartwright.

McLeod has said he chose to end the friendship with Hewitt. He maintains who Hewitt keeps as friends is of no interest to him - nor is it paramount to the current saga.

But others say Rachael McLeod's feelings are very different. Again, it depends on who is telling the never-ending story.