A year after returning from an AFL suspension, Steven Trigg is quitting the Adelaide Crows to join Carlton as their new chief executive.

Trigg on Tuesday confirmed the end of his 13-year stint as Adelaide’s chief executive.

He will move to Carlton to replace Greg Swann, who resigned as the Blues’ chief in May this year.

Trigg said he had been thinking about his future when the Carlton opportunity arose about a month ago.

“The pure logic is joining a great club like Carlton, I couldn’t get out of my head,” he told reporters in Adelaide on Tuesday.

Adelaide’s dual premiership Nigel Smart, currently the club’s chief operating officer, is among touted candidates to replace Trigg as chief executive.

Trigg will leave the Crows in four weeks, saying the South Australian club was in “really great shape”.

“Over the last 12 months we have made enormous amount of ground as a club,” he said.

“No CEO wants to leave a place that is not … humming along really well.”

Trigg returned to work with the Crows in July last year after being suspended by the AFL for six months for his role in the Kurt Tippett contract controversy.

Trigg, in 2012, pleaded guilty to three draft and salary cap breaches and was fined $50,000 and banned for breaking league rules when Tippett was re-signed by Adelaide in 2009.

The Crows were also fined $300,000 and barred from the opening two rounds of the 2012 draft for the breaches.

Tippett, who moved to Sydney at the end of 2012, was also fined $50,000 and banned for 11 games, with all suspensions ending in the middle of last year.