Tigers pair turfed out
Pair booted from Queensland over night out
RICHMOND pair Sydney Stack and Callum ColemanJones have been booted out of Queensland in disgrace and the club fined $100,000 over a brazen night out at a Gold Coast strip club.
The Tigers players have each been slapped with 10match suspensions.
The club is only one more COVID breach away from losing premiership points.
CCTV vision shows Stack and Coleman-Jones sitting on a bench near a strip joint, when Coleman-Jones was accosted by a drunken bystander, starting an altercation.
RICHMOND pair Sydney Stack and Callum ColemanJones have been booted out of Queensland in disgrace and the club fined $100,000 over a brazen night out at the Gold Coast strippers.
The Tigers duo have each been slapped with 10-match suspensions. The club is only one more COVID breach away from losing premiership points and draft picks.
Richmond chief executive Brendon Gale admitted to the club’s failings in the Gold Coast hub. Stack and Coleman-Jones broke strict AFL
COVID protocols by venturing out in an Uber to the notorious Cavill Avenue nightclub strip in search of food. The use of an Uber was the pair’s first breach of the AFL’s rules.
Stack was detained briefly at 3.30am on Friday following a fight involving ColemanJones outside a kebab shop near the Hollywood Showgirls strip joint. The incident was captured on CCTV footage and took place just metres from a police station.
The Tigers said last night Coleman-Jones had been taken to hospital with a facial injury, while Stack also suffered a facial injury.
The pair will together pay $75,000 of the $100,000 fine, with Richmond paying the $25,000 portion which was suspended from Brooke Cotchin’s COVID breach.
The $100,000 fine will be forced into the club’s 2021 football department cap.
Essendon champion Matthew Lloyd said yesterday it was unfair that the AFL’s COVID penalties hurt coaches under the 2021 football department cap when it was players involved. The AFL Coaches Association would not comment yesterday.
But they are are set to ask the question of the AFL why coaches and officials are hurt by player issues.
Richmond chief executive Brendon Gale admitted the Tigers had to be better after again risking the competition’s ongoing health.
“Richmond — like all clubs — has a responsibility to the game, and the broader AFL community, to observe the COVID-19 protocols that the AFL has put in place. Clearly Callum and Sydney did not meet that responsibility this week, and we are incredibly disappointed,” Gale said.
“The club can’t ignore the fact that off-field we have got some things wrong in recent months. We need to own that as a club and get better.
“These players made very poor decisions after consuming too much alcohol.”
It is the second offence involving the premiership favorites after the wife of skipper Trent Cotchin left the hub to visit a day spa last month.
The kebab shop catastrophe comes amid a storm of criticism over the special treatment and “double standards” given to AFL clubs and officials by the Queensland Government over border security.
About 400 AFL officials and industry stakeholders are serving a 14-day quarantine stint at the 4.5 star Mercure
Gold Coast Resort in Carrara ahead of next month’s finals series.
Vision showed Stack and Coleman-Jones sitting on a bench out the front of the kebab shop when ColemanJones appeared to be accosted by a drunken bystander, starting an altercation.
Kebab Zone owner Mick Akca did not see the start of the fracas but said Stack was a “nice guy” who was tired and a bit tipsy and the person that approached the duo was a drunken troublemaker. AFL General Counsel Andrew Dillon said the AFL’s protocols were “the competition’s license to play and any breach would be held into account”.