Eddie’s tough talk thrown out window
VIDEO has emerged of Collingwood president Eddie McGuire declaring that the next AFL player caught breaching the AFL’s strict COVID-19 protocols should be fined $100,000 and suspended for the season.
A fired-up McGuire — a member of the league’s coronavirus “war cabinet” — pushed for more severe player sanctions on Footy Classified on April 29, the same day three Fremantle players were caught attending a small house party during the competition’s 82-day shutdown.
The Footy Classified footage has surfaced just days after McGuire’s Magpies savaged the four-week suspension handed to Collingwood star Steele Sidebottom over his booze-up last weekend.
“This is the reason why the AFL are trying to show social leadership and do everything right along the way,” McGuire said on the April 29 show. “And I’m saying once we get back there will be absolutely no sense of humour about anybody climbing out the window or letting someone climb in the window. That will be absolutely made clear.”
Pressed by panellist Matthew Lloyd that it wouldn’t be the last time a player mucked up, McGuire said: “Well, you know what, we say that all the time, ‘Like ah, the naughty boys’.
“But no, it has to be the last time. It really does.
“So maybe it has to be $100,000 and he gets suspended for the year.
“What do we have to tell people?
“We are trying to claw back $500 to $600 million.
“No one will have a job next year. Pull your heads in. I hope that comes up at the AFL Players’ Association membership meeting tonight.”
Sidebottom, 29, was whacked with a four-week ban by the AFL this week after it emerged he had been picked up by police drunk and half-naked on the streets of Williamstown at 7.30am last Sunday.
The league integrity unit found the Magpies vice-captain had broken three of its strict coronavirus protocols by staying longer than he should have at teammate Jeremy Howe’s house last Saturday afternoon, travelling in an Uber and visiting the home of club employee
Daniel Wells, who is not in the club’s COVID-compliant “bubble”.
Collingwood, which made no mention of the police involvement in its initial statement, savaged the four-week ban as “excessive (and) inconsistent with recent protocol breaches and contestable” but said the club had accepted the verdict “for the greater good of the game”.
A witness, who was with a friend outside the Williamstown housing lodge on Sunday morning, said they saw Sidebottom in a semi-dressed state just after 7am.