Ex-Pie shares ’bus’ recording
HERITIER Lumumba has released tape recordings from meetings with former Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley during his tumultuous final year at the Magpies.
The audio, tweeted by Lumumba on Tuesday, appears to verify his claim Buckley accused him of throwing Eddie McGuire “under a bus” when he publicly questioned the then Collingwood president’s King Kong gaffe.
Lumumba posted the recordings after Buckley said the 2010 premiership player’s version of events was “not the truth that I know to be true”.
The audio included a 2014 meeting in which Buckley tells Lumumba: “You threw him (McGuire) under the bus, mate”.
Lumumba replied: “I didn’t throw him under the bus … I’ve gone through this whole year, and this is part of my issue, because you still believe that, and that’s what hurts me so much, Bucks.”
Buckley then said: “What the whole thing comes back to is, do you actually think about the best interests of the football club?”
Lumumba also tweeted: “I’ve given Nathan Buckley many years to grow and hopefully tell the truth. Unfortunately he has used his platform and considerable profile to discredit me, including making insinuations about my mental health and being deliberately misleading about the past.”
Buckley fired back, tweeting: “Heritier, I offer you the opportunity to put a full and uncut version of our conversations on public record so as to provide context to our conversations and the support that was provided to you above and beyond that which could be reasonably expected in the circumstances”.
In the recording, Lumumba is heard telling Buckley he was given permission by Magpies media manager Stephen Rielly to speak out about McGuire’s racist comments regarding Adam Goodes.
“I was told that and when I did I was then ostracised for that,” Lumumba told Buckley.
Buckley replied: “Did Riles (Rielly) think you were going to somehow support the club? … because you’ve become a bit of a rogue and you might call it leadership but you’ve basically gone on your own, not tangents, but on your own crusades at times.”