ROCK BOTTOM

Pie cops four-week ban over half-naked romp

STEELE Sidebottom has been hit with a four-week ban after it emerged he was picked up by police drunk and half-naked on the streets of suburban Melbourne at 7.30am on Sunday.

The AFL has come down hard on

MICHAEL WARNER

the Magpies vice-captain as the competition reels from Victoria’s deepening COVID-19 crisis.

The league found Sidebottom broke three of its strict coronavirus protocols by staying longer than he should have at teammate Jeremy Howe’s house on Saturday, travelling in an Uber and visiting the home of Daniel Wells, who is not in the club’s COVID-compliant “bubble”.

Sidebottom’s marathon weekend bender followed his side’s narrow loss to GWS on Friday night.

Collingwood and Sidebottom slammed the four-week ban as “excessive

[and] inconsistent with recent protocol breaches” and said there were grounds to contest the penalty.

But the Magpies said they had accepted the verdict “for the greater good of the game”.

A witness, who was with a friend near a Williamstown housing lodge on Sunday, said they saw Sidebottom, 29, in a semi-dressed state.

“All he wanted to do was get in [the housing lodge] because he was cold,” the witness said. “I was there, visiting my mate, and he looked naked and the coppers knew him straight away.”

The temperature on Sunday morning dropped as low as 2C.

Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley said Sidebottom’s recollection of events over the course of his booze-up “isn’t that great’’.

Teammate Lynden Dunn, who was with Sidebottom in the Uber, has copped a one-week ban.

The pair had visited Howe to console him after scans showed the star defender would miss the bulk of the season with a knee injury.

“In speaking with Steele, he’s quite embarrassed about the situation,” Buckley said. “He’s obviously remorseful about the decisions that were made, but he’s also in some ways confused about what has taken place.

“At some point obviously with his drinking he’s made some poor decisions, but his recollection isn’t that great. He hasn’t been consuming as much alcohol [before the weekend] and one of the theories is that he wasn’t able to handle what he consumed at Howe’s place.”