Furious Gold Coast Suns boss lashes St Kilda coach Ross Lyon for ‘nepo baby’ comments

A pre-game comment from St Kilda coach Ross Lyon has ignited a fire and the Gold Coast Suns are coming after him hard.

Furious Gold Coast chief executive Mark Evans has taken his club’s anger over Ross Lyon’s “nepo baby” comments to another level, calling them “offensive” and telling the St Kilda chief executive just that on Sunday as the heat between the two clubs rises.

Saints coach Lyon has infuriated Gold Coast officials, including coach Damien Hardwick, who lashed the poor turnout of just more than 13,000 people at Marvel Stadium on Sunday and said St Kilda should “look after their own house”.

“Chock full of talent aren’t they, the AFL nepo baby,” Lyon told Fox Footy pre game, likely referencing the concessions the Suns have received.

Evans went hard at Lyon on Monday morning and said it was a “whinge” that was “out of order”.

“I thought the comments were offensive and out of order,” Evans said on Monday.

“Offensive in that the word implies corruption and favouritism, so that really stabs at the club’s hard work over a lot of years.

Gold Coast Suns chief executive Mark Evans said St Kilda coach Ross Lyon’s comments were ‘offensive’. Picture: Chris Hyde/Getty Images

“We haven’t always had the best history at stuff. We lost a lot of players, we had to rebuild. We knew we were going to reset through the draft.

“There’s a lot of hard work to get to a position where we’ve finally had some wins at the front end of the season.

“Ross is an outstanding coach, St Kilda have had some good moments in their history. Grand final in 2011. It would be like me getting up and saying, ‘Oh, the only reason they’ve made the grand final is because they were gifted Nick Riewoldt, Luke Ball and Justin Koschitzke’.

“There’s so much work and effort that goes into getting to that stage. Imagine belittling the club that it was just gifted to them.”

Evans said he didn’t get “much” from St Kilda chief executive Carl Dilena when he raised the matter on Sunday afternoon and suggested the comments could have been planned.

“We found it offensive and out of order,” Evans told SEN.

“It’s unusual in a pre-game interview. It’s hard to see that those words would just fall out at that particular time.

“We didn’t like it.

Lyon called the Suns the AFL’s ‘nepo baby’. Picture: Michael Klein

“Carl Dilena and I passed each other in the corridors yesterday and I was walking along with him for 20 or 30m.

“I’m not sure whether he had heard the comments by that stage, but I told him we thought they were offensive. He didn’t offer up much at that point in time.”

Evans said the Suns were used to being the subject of attacks but wanted to “stand up” for the club who are third on the ladder with eight wins from 10 games and eyeing off a maiden finals berth.

“We don’t really care, we get a lot of things said about us – as does every club – we’re not so worried about that,” he said.

“But this seemed like a whinge that was out of order, and we want to stand up for our club.

“This goes to the heart of all of the hard work of a lot of people, and to turn it around from where we’ve been, then to just say that that is only because of some corruption and favouritism – that is uncalled for.

“This particular comment, I think, went too far because it talked to the possibility of corruption and favouritism as being the only things that are going well for Gold Coast Suns.”

Originally published as Furious Gold Coast Suns boss lashes St Kilda coach Ross Lyon for ‘nepo baby’ comments