McGUIRE STUNS WITH ON-AIR TONGUE-SLIP
EDDIE McGuire is facing another controversy after an on-air stumble during the Richmond versus Hawthorn post-match analysis last night.
Hosting the Fox Footy coverage, McGuire tripped over his words as he crossed to Kelli Underwood and Dermott Brereton in the Tigers’ change rooms.
“Let’s go back to the rooms now, Kelli and Derm and a black boy by the name of Rioli,” McGuire appears to say.
But a Fox Footy spokeswoman said yesterday that McGuire had stumbled on his words and referred to Rioli as a “bloke, boy”, not a “black boy”.
McGuire strongly denied saying anything untoward.
“I can’t believe that people would be so stupid to think I said anything like that,” he said. “It’s clear what I said.
“I was crossing down, with noise all around me, and the producer in my ear, I went to throw to ‘a bloke named Rioli’ and something in my head said change it to ‘a boy named Rioli’. “And I said bloke-boy, as simple as that.”
McGuire said: “People are going mad. Clearly it’s a bloke named Rioli, it’s a boy named Rioli. Clearly it was bloke-boy Rioli.”
A Richmond spokesman said the club was aware of Eddie’s stumble last night but had no comment.
The Collingwood president caused outrage on his breakfast radio program in 2013 when he suggested Sydney AFL great Adam Goodes should be used to promote the musical King Kong, just days after the indigenous star had been racially abused by a Magpies fan who called him an ape.
In 2016, he said he had been run down and was on heavyduty painkillers for a knee infection when he made that comment.
McGuire told News Corp last week: “The Adam Goodes thing (in 2013) was something that happened when I was exhausted. My reputation and my history stands before that, and stands since that. If people are going to (criticise) for what was a complete slip of the tongue, that’s not my issue.
“I’ve been well embraced by indigenous Australians and they understand what my role has been, and will continue to be.”