Steve Price: Eddie McGuire is no racist

Anyone suggesting Eddie McGuire is in any way racist doesn’t appreciate the family man of strict principles he is.

Steve Price and Eddie McGuire almost came to a blows at a party over a rumour reported on 3AW.

Eddie McGuire is no racist.

Anyone suggesting that Eddie is, doesn’t know the Collingwood President and media veteran or appreciate the man he is.

The pile on created by Collingwood’s self-inflicted, activist-generated 18-step report into the club’s handling of internal racial complaints has been disgraceful.

Eddie could do the cowardly thing and run away from the issue by quitting the presidency and quietly retreat into the arms of his loving family who really appreciate Eddie for who he is — but that’s not Ed’s style.

He’s a fighter, he’s a high achiever and he’s a man of strict principals, and he knows that giving into some of the more inflammatory critics who have probably never met him would be the easy way out.

Critics like recently-elected Green’s Senator Lydia Thorpe — a life long indigenous activist- who leapt on the clumsy opening to Collingwood’s media briefing this week to make some defamatory, insulting and ill-informed claims about McGuire.

McGuire is a fighter, writes Steve Price. Picture: Nicole Garmston

Eddie should sue her but that’s not his style. Senator Thorpe, in typical Greens-style, jumped on the radio to claim McGuire had “ruined” people’s lives and careers and making the outrageous suggestion “he’s not even sorry” and he “needs to leave now before he does any more harm”.

Is the Senator really suggesting that Eddie McGuire is actively trying to harm the football club he’s served on a voluntary basis for 22 years starting way back in 1998 as a 33-year-old?

She wasn’t the only knife-throwing critic this week and who should be surprised, given Eddie McGuire is about as tall a tall poppy as you could find in Victoria.

He’s an easy target and has been since leaving Channel 10 as a sports reporter and taking over as host of the newly minted Channel 9 Footy Show.

Described to me by his long-time friend and supporter Sam Newman as the best live TV performer in the history of Australian television, McGuire has been too successful in the eyes of his critics.

I have known Eddie since the early 90s when he ran a Triple M radio show called the Grill Team in opposition to my drivetime radio show on 3AW.

His program was a mixture of sport, news, comedy and music and was a trailblazer in that format with a panel of presenters including Brigette Duclos and Hawthorn legend Dermot Brereton.

The ratings battle between us was pretty willing and Ed and I often traded barbs in print about one another, but it was never personal.

Eddie McGuire and Steve Price used to be radio rivals.

That was until one night in 1997, the opening night of Lloyd Williams’ Crown casino in Southbank. Lloyd and then-Premier Jeff Kennett wearing white tuxedos — of all things — cut a ribbon on the sweeping stairs leading up to the Palladium Room.

It was a big night with big entertainment and if I remember correctly Elton John and Billy Joel played back-to-back pianos as the entertainment.

At the end of the night drinks were underway in one of the bars when Eddie, in a very agitated state, approached me about a rumour involving his wife Carla’s fashion business that had gone to air on 3AW breakfast that day.

To say he wasn’t happy is an understatement and a physical altercation was looming when from out of nowhere the then-Channel Nine Midday host Kerri-Anne Kennerley leapt on Eddie’s back and dragged him to the ground.

I must remind readers it was the 90s and we made up a couple of days later at a Sam Newman-arranged peace making dinner at Caffe Cucina in South Yarra.

Eddie left radio not long after that to concentrate on his TV career and take on the presidency of his beloved Collingwood.

The next time we ran into each other Eddie, like me, had moved to Sydney — me to do breakfast radio and he was appointed CEO of the Nine network.

Ever the networker Eddie wanted to tap my knowledge of the local market and even asked for advice on where was the best place for him to settle his family into Sydney — the eastern suburbs or North Shore — advice he promptly ignored.

The Sydney media, it would be fair to say, never took to Eddie McGuire and the newspapers at the time hounded him pretty much out of town.

He was a target back then and has continued to be a target today but to call McGuire a racist is just plain wrong. I would describe Eddie’s politics — and he might not like this — as soft left.

Sam Newman says Eddie McGuire is the best in live Australian TV.

His brother Frank who worked in newspapers with me is a State Labour MP. Eddie — along with another soft leftie former PM Malcolm Turnbull — was the face of the failed Republican referendum.

He was born and raised in working class Broadmeadows, got himself an academic scholarship, and found his calling as a scoop-delivering sports reporter on Network Ten.

Passionate and outspoken and virtually all his life working in live media he has, like all of us, made mistakes.

That doesn’t make Eddie McGuire a racist. He is criticised for an on-air radio gaffe about Adam Goodes but was also the first into the Sydney Swans dressing room to apologise for a Pies supporter’s remarks aimed at Adam.

Anyone who has worked live on TV or radio for long enough will say something they would later regret. It doesn’t make you a racist or a misogynist and it shouldn’t reach the hysterical levels it did around Eddie this week.

Notably Victoria’s hard left Premier Daniel Andrews was quick to support McGuire and does anyone seriously think the savvy politician that Andrews is would do that if Ed was racist.

If the rabid sideline critics get their way and force the Collingwood board, through pressure on sponsors, to move Eddie on sooner than his end of year exit Collingwood will be the biggest losers.

As 1980 Grand Final winning Richmond coach Tony Jewell told me this week, Eddie McGuire talking about his love of Collingwood and football in general at a speaking function a few years back had brought him to tears.

And that from a Richmond man.