The Crows announced last weekend Darley wouldn't return to the club to coach, but would continue to play as a travelling player after moving back to Victoria for family reasons.

But although the club still holds out a glimmer of hope, they are resigned to being without a player many regard as the Riverina's best this year.

Darley has since clarified his move in an email to The Daily Advertiser. His partner has returned home to return to the police force, and her request to have weekends off to enable Darley to travel was denied.

The couple have a ten-month-old son, Clay.

"If it means he can't return to play for us, there's not too much we can do. It's a fair commitment to travel back from Melbourne," Crows president Tim Carroll said.

"We knew if we could give him a bit more support around him next year, we could go a bit better. But he has laid a pretty good foundation with some pretty good kids.

"Everyone in the league recognised how good a player he is, so he's certainly going to be hard to replace. I suppose the good thing is we find out now rather than him letting us know early next year."

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Carroll was confident the club would still improve next season under new coach Tom Groves, who they had been trying to sign from Coleambally for some time.

"The reason we got him so quickly is we have been talking to him for a couple of years about coming here as a player. We were just fortunate he was able to come here now," he said.

Dave (Meline, Crows official) and I had a meeting with him on the weekend to discuss the playing group, look at some recruiting strategies and who we can target. We're pretty confident we can go forward and play some pretty good footy this year, and play finals.

"I hadn't spoken to him (Groves) before we met up with him this weekend. I was very impressed, he seems to be a decent young bloke and certainly knows his football," Carroll said.

"We'll give him a bit more support in terms of some players to replace Sam. There may be a couple of young players who go away to uni, but some others from who study at Wollongong could do their courses online so they might be able to stick around."

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