AFL 2015: Richard Colless tells of expletive laden tirade from AFL commission chairman

UPDATE: THE AFL has responded to claims it broke its own rules in a bid to get Lance Franklin to GWS following Richard Colless’ explosive claims against the league’s commission chairman.

Sydney Swans' Lance Franklin looks on during AFL match Sydney Swans v Hawthorn at ANZ Stadium. Picture. Phil Hillyard

UPDATE: THE AFL has responded to claims it broke its own rules in a bid to get Lance Franklin to GWS following former Swans president Richard Colless’ explosive claims against the league’s commission chairman.

Colless told the Herald Sun a furious AFL Commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick rang him — and delivered an expletive-laden tirade — after ‘Buddy’ Franklin joined Sydney at the end of 2013.

The AFL and the football world had expected Franklin to sign with Greater Western Sydney.

When an angry Fitzpatrick made his displeasure known on the phone, Colless said he told the chairman the AFL had “broken at least three of its rules”.

Late today the AFL issued a statement. It did not deny the conversation between Fitzpatrick and Colless had taken place, but said any suggestion the league had tried to interfere with Franklin’s deal were incorrect.

“The AFL wishes to state for the record it completely rejects allegations made in some media outlets today the AFL had sought to circumvent its own rules around Total Player Payments, Free Agency and Player Movement, regarding player Lance Franklin after the conclusion of the 2013 Toyota AFL Premiership Season,” the statement said.

It went on to say the AFL “was not involved in any dealings that player Franklin and his management may have had with any other club in the competition ... under the Free Agency Rules, before the player made his final decision to accept an offer from the Sydney Swans.”

Lance Franklin was thought to be going to GWS but chose Sydney.

Earlier today, Pies president Eddie McGuire said revelations of Fitzpatrick’s tirade were “staggering”.

McGuire, who has long been vocal on issues surrounding Sydney, the cost of living allowance and equality measures, said Colless’ revelations vindicated all of his “whingeing”.

Amid growing criticism of Fitzpatrick’s handling of the Adam Goodes race row, Colless has revealed how his wife Susie overheard a “torrent of abuse” directed at him by the league supremo in October 2013.

The Swans stunned the football world just days after the 2013 Grand Final by signing free agent Franklin to a nine-year, $10 million deal.

The football world had expected Franklin to go to the Swans’ cross-town rivals, the Giants.

“There was no warm up, no introduction — the opening pleasantries were the ‘F’ bomb and the ‘C’ bomb,” Colless told the Herald Sun of the Fitzpatrick phone call.

“I must admit I was taken aback. It went on for about 10 minutes and it was basically just a torrent of abuse.

“I was at home when the phone rang. Mike’s number came up and my wife just happened to be standing where the phone was. I didn’t put it on loud speaker, so she didn’t hear every word of it, but she got the thrust of it pretty well.

“It got to a point where he said to me, and I’m paraphrasing: ‘If any of this gets out to the press — this conversation — I’ll know where it came from and you watch out’. To which I think I said: ‘Mike — get f.....’.

“I have never been so offended and I said if you ever speak like this again to me you are the one that will have something to consider.

“I said, ‘Mike you are the chairman of the AFL, which rightly or wrongly is regarded as the leading sports governing body in Australia, and you’re acting like you’re a Mafia Don’.”

Colless said the episode was symptomatic of Fitzpatrick’s performance as head of the AFL.

“I think he is singularly inappropriate to be running the AFL — and the debate that is raging now about the AFL’s leadership with the Adam Goodes thing is a classic example,” he said.

“Mike is a huge handbrake on much of what the AFL wants to be doing or should be doing.”

The AFL was asked to respond to Colless’s recollection of the Franklin conversation. The league had not responded last night.

Colless said he explained to Fitzpatrick that Franklin had shifted to the Swans under the AFL’s free agency rules.

“I said: ‘Tell me what we’ve done wrong?’ He said: ‘That’s not the f….ing point. Don’t get f...ing smart with me. You knew what we wanted to do and you came to us with your bloody COLA (cost of living allowance), and I told you I’d support you on COLA and then you raced away and did this deal.

Richard Colless was not impressed with Mike Fitzpatrick’s phone call.

“He said, ‘And you know I f..ing well supported COLA — well I’m not doing that now’. I thought well that’s really mature.”

“I said, ‘Mike this is bizarre, you’re making this some kind of conspiracy’.

“And my wife said what was amusing for her was that whenever I said ‘But Mike’ he kept talking over me.

“I also said to him: ‘Mike the truth is if I wanted to pursue this, the guilty party is not the Swans or Lance Franklin or GWS or Liam Pickering, it’s the AFL’.

“The AFL broke at least three of its rules in relation to this. It dealt consistently with the player outside the prescribed area. You had that window and then it closed. You kept dealing with the player or manager during that period.

“Secondly, you were in a position to top up the amount of money that was coming from the club through a third-party arrangement, and that was merely you transferring funds from one of your sponsors to GWS or to Franklin.

“And the third was that you would allow GWS to trade with Hawthorn and I think that was designed to make it easier for Hawthorn to get some young players, which again is illegal.

“But it was like talking to a brick wall.”

Colless said he wrote to Fitzpatrick the following day to reiterate that the Swans had not broken any rules.

McGuire said on Triple M this morning: “He (Colless) has accused the AFL of systematically cheating the salary cap, the trade rules, the free agency rules (and) collusion behind the scenes. It’s staggering.

“I read it last night ... I couldn’t go to sleep.

“One, I couldn’t believe the vitriol that is obviously raging between the two, but then I couldn’t believe the content. This is what I’ve been screaming about for years and it’s always been thrown back as ‘whingeing McGuire’ and all that sort of stuff. Now it’s laid bare.

“This is as explosive a confrontation as I’ve ever seen at the AFL.

“I’m going to actually keep my powder dry on 24 hours about this, before we come out and have a big chat. I have to speak to people today seriously about all this type of thing.

“These allegations are fundamental to the rules of the AFL.”

Former Essendon skipper Tim Watson said it was just an indication of the lay of the land in the AFL and the reality of negotiations in business.

“That’s the way the AFL has operated for a long, long time. Everything is on the table. You do a deal, you have a negotiation. That’s the way they do business,” he told SEN.

“Have a look at the AFL in totality. We’ve got artificial teams that have been planted in non-AFL states and cities and the whole competition is compromised to try and build a competitive competition … in drafts, in draws, everywhere, because there’s this artificial design of trying to have a national competition that’s competitive.

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“It’s like politics. That happens all the time. It happens in politics, it happens in life, it happens in the AFL.”

The Swans were cleared of any wrongdoing in an AFL investigation but were later stripped of COLA and slapped with harsh trade restrictions.

“The COLA thing wasn’t a figment of someone’s imagination — it was real,” Colless said.

“It was done vindictively, it was done brutally. And the removal of Sydney from trading — I’m sure that if you hired a high-calibre silk and took them to court I don’t think they would have any ground at all for doing what they’ve done.”

Originally published as AFL 2015: Richard Colless tells of expletive laden tirade from AFL commission chairman