St Kilda president Peter Summers stands by club’s response to Marc Murphy sledging furore
EVEN after St Kilda admitted it was wrong to sledge Marc Murphy, the club was still was criticised for its lack of a sincere apology, and the president isn’t going to cop that.
Mark Robinson
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ST KILDA president Peter Summers knew something had happened.
He was watching the game with the Billings family and near the end of the match he invited them to join him in the rooms to sing the song. They politely declined because they wanted to watch their son Jack being interviewed on the ground.
At the siren, as Summers started to head to the rooms, he saw Leigh Montagna and Marc Murphy meet and then watched Murphy avoid the Saints and walk towards the Carlton race.
In the rooms, Summers found chief executive Matt Finnis and list manager Ameet Bains.
“I was feeling something a little bit uncomfortable here,” he told the Herald Sun.
“Do you know what happened,’’ Summers asked the pair. They didn’t know.
All would soon find out and thus began the complex process of finding out what Murphy said to Jake Carlisle and what Carlisle — and at the most two others — said to Murphy and how best to deal with it.
The Murphy-Carlisle exchange included a comment about cocaine use and a comment about Murphy’s wife.
At its end, after St Kilda admitted its failings, the football club was criticised for its lack of a sincere apology, which was led by coach Alan Richardson, and the lack of substance in response from the AFL.
“Absolutely we did apologise,” Summers said.
Summers is the quiet president. Promoted from board member to the presidency in August, 2013, Summers — to borrow a Rossy Lyon-ism — lets the cobblers cobble. In other words, he allows the executive, led by Finnis, to do their job and rarely speaks publicly on club matters.
This week was different.
A challenging period for the club — the first on culture-related behaviour since probably a dwarf’s clothes were set on fire at a South Melbourne pub in September 2013 — saw his club also accused of being disrespectful to a woman (Murphy’s wife) and to women overall.
Premiership coach Paul Roos was the first and strongest critic.
“We all know what the line is. If it gets too personal it reflects poorly on the St Kilda football club and as an extension everyone at that football club,’’ Roos told Triple M.
“I would think Alan Richardson would be disappointed as well. I would think they would address it. It reflects poorly on the St Kilda Football Club.”
Summers disagreed.
“Firstly, I respect Paul, when anyone of standing in the game makes a comment you don’t dismiss it quickly, you listen and evaluate,” he said.
“But with these things, we think it’s easier to make some of those decisions from the inside with fuller information and I certainly think that was an incorrect assessment from Paul.
“We have worked really hard over recent years to be very much values-driven and all credit to Matt and the playing group we’ve got that done.”
The explosive Carlilse-Murphy story was leaked Sunday and was ablaze on Monday before St Kilda captain Jarryn Geary and Richardson contacted Murphy.
Richardson went public on AFL360 on Monday night, which was his first public offering, a fact which was also drove criticism.
Summers was unequivocal that his club’s response was sincere.
“That really does come down to an opinion, no matter which way you go, there’s going to be varying opinions on that,” he said.
“There’s two things you want in this and the first is you want to assess your own behaviour and I think we did that. It wasn’t judged against other things that may or may not have happened, it was a judgment of behaviour.
“And the second thing was, if you think you have done something wrong, you reach out to the person and you reconcile that and I think two things were absolutely done ... and done promptly.
“Jarryn showed extraordinarily good leadership, I’m really proud about how he went about that.
“Anything else ... it’s an opinion business, isn’t it.”
And opinions have varied.
It was a cheap comment from Murphy and an utterly classless response from Carlisle and both were an attempt to emotionally hurt the other which is, after all, what sledging is.
Clearly, no longer is the saying sticks and stones applicable — in any area of society.
Mental health, bullying and respect for women are major society issues and last Saturday’s incident covered all those bases.
What’s certain is Summers and/or the Saints best sit down and talk to Carlisle.
After a big two days where the Saints copped it from all quarters, on Monday night Carlisle still had not cottoned on to the seriousness of the situation.
Perhaps the Saints should’ve put up Carlisle to make the apology.
But, no, instead Carlisle got on social media — something he should avoid — and liked a tweet which called Murphy a whinger.
He has to tread warily, Carlisle. He’s at his second club and just eight games into his new career, and he has already brought wide condemnation on the club.
That tweet he liked, which came after conciliation between his club and Murphy, would have to be the second dumbest act a player has committed on social media.
Unfortunately for Jake, he holds first place as well and there’s no doubt he would’ve felt the wrath of Finnis and probably Richardson too.
As for the AFL, they also took a hammering.
They contacted both clubs on Sunday and Monday and both clubs, and Murphy in particular, didn’t want to take action.
The AFL’s vilification code follows the course of complaint and mediation, but this situation didn’t get the balling rolling. No complaint equals no mediation.
Privately, the AFL asked itself what more could it have done. It had serious discussions with women on its executive, but ultimately took no action.
This was an argument between two footballers and one of them dragged a women into his insult and that was unacceptable.
Summers won’t disagree with anybody on that stance.
“We’re not absolutely proud of what happened and the criticism is there and we put our hand up,’’ he said.
“But I’m very proud of all of our club and while actions were not correct on the day, I was very proud of the way everyone took ownership of it.”
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