Footy’s biggest coach v media blow-ups
Brad Scott’s run-in with David King is the latest incident in a series of bizarre and occasionally terrifying coach v media blow-ups, including the day Terry Wallace took aim at a Herald Sun journo.
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Footy is a stressful and emotional game, especially when you’re sitting in the coach’s box and the media is turning the heat up on your club.
It’s not surprising those emotions sometimes boil over in the heat of the moment, with Brad Scott’s run-in with Fox Footy expert David King last Saturday just the latest example.
Scott later denied he made a “beeline” for the Kangaroos champ at three-quarter time on Saturday, but he appeared to brush past King, who was working as boundary rider, as he made his way to the team huddle. The outgoing Kangas coach then made a few comments that weren’t hard for any lip reader to decipher.
“I probably would (take that back),” Scott said on AFL 360 last night. “But I don’t live my life in hindsight. Life’s full of mistakes and if you don’t make mistakes, you don’t get better. I pride myself on certainly my professional life living on the edge, and I’ve been an absolute competitor. And when you are on the edge, you’re going to tip over the edge a couple of times. I don’t waste any time on it (watching it again).”
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Here are eight other tales of coach versus journalist feuds tipping over the edge.
Terry Wallace v Geoff Poulter
Poulter covered the VFL and AFL for almost 40 years after starting with The Mercury in Hobart in 1967 and had plenty of run-ins with coaches, including a spray from then Western Bulldogs coach Terry Wallace that has resurfaced online in the wake of the Scott v King incident last weekend.
After the Dogs lost to Fremantle in Round 1, 1997 in front of just 8664 fans, Poulter wrote a preview in the Herald Sun for their Round 2 clash against Sydney that suggested the Dogs would have to lock the gates to keep fans in.
“We won the game and I let him have it. Actually, didn’t realise it was taped,” Wallace said on Twitter.
“Poor old Geoff would not hurt a fly.”
Cameras captured Wallace telling Poulter: “That is trash ... absolute trash, Geoff. If you want to be let into our rooms, you don’t see any more of this crap.”
When Poulter tried to ask a question, Wallace answered: “Geoff, if you don’t shut up just go out, please.”
Poulter says he was caught by surprise by the spray and Wallace apologised afterwards.
“I got a bit of a surprise, but it didn’t really bother me,” he said today.
He said press conferences now were sanitised compared to the lawless days of the 1970s and 80s when sometimes only five or six newspaper reporters would be there to quiz a coach, with no TV cameras in sight.
“I can remember going to Hawthorn and John Kennedy would say: ‘Just write they all played well’. He wouldn’t give us anything,” Poulter said.
“(Mick) Malthouse, (David) Parkin and (Ron) Barassi were the worst. Parkin probably got worked up more than anyone.
“In the last game of 1977 Scot Palmer got all the reporters to lie down on the chairs and when Barassi walked in and asked what we were doing Palmer said: ‘We’re laying down like you did today’. Barassi went off his brain.”
Luke Beveridge v Damian Barrett
The bad blood between the Bulldogs coach and footy newsbreaker received another airing in recent weeks after the shock retirement of Tom Boyd.
Beveridge used his weekly press conference to take aim at an unnamed reporter who he claimed had tried to “take down” Boyd as he battled mental health issues behind the scenes.
“That’s a real shame because that’s a choice that a certain journalist might make and it’s just a window into that person’s soul and how black that soul is,” Beveridge said.
Barrett said on radio that he assumed the broadside was directed at him.
“It’s unfortunate and it’s sad, I think, that Luke Beveridge needs to use Tom Boyd moments to leverage the hatred that he has for me, clearly,” he said on Triple M.
Barrett said he didn’t know of Boyd’s private struggles when he wrote articles about him in 2016, and the animosity between the pair dated back to his reporting of claims in 2015 that Michael Talia had leaked “game sensitive information” to his brother Daniel before the Dogs and Crows played off in an elimination final.
“Four days after that report, at the Brownlow Medal dinner, he made forceful physical contact with me,” Barrett wrote on the AFL website. “It may have been an accident. It may not have been.”
Alastair Clarkson v Matt Thompson
Clarkson is a unqualified coaching genius but a fiery temper is just below the surface — just ask whoever had to repair the wall of the MCG coaches box after Clarko put his hand through it in 2012.
It flared again the next year during a press conference at Melbourne Airport before a flight to Tasmania for a game against the GWS Giants, when the Hawks coach bristled over questions about a predicted percentage-boosting win.
“You’re asking some foolish questions and I don’t even want to respond to it,” he said.
It became a lot more personal at the end of the press conference when he told AFL Media journo Matt Thompson “you’re a c--khead”, which was picked up by microphones.
Then Hawthorn president Andrew Newbold downplayed the remark at the time: “My understanding was it wasn’t an outburst, it was an off-the-cuff remark. I think it is disappointing but to be honest in the context of what we are here to do tomorrow, I don’t see it as a big issue.”
Clarkson also directed an expletive-filled rant at Tasmanian journalist Brett Stubbs after a post-match press conference in 2008. The Hawks coach later phoned Stubbs to apologise.
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Mick Malthouse v the media
Over his long coaching career Mick had a number of run-ins with journalists, including taking exception to a photographer who rustled a pastry wrapper too loudly and Herald Sun reporter Jay Clark asking if he thought the Magpies had “come to play” at a post-match press conference, prompting this response: “I reckon they probably come here thinking, ‘We’re going to have a real bad one today, in the first quarter’. What do you honestly think? That term ‘come to play’ … where does it originate from? Do they reckon they’ve come to play marbles or football? Do you think they didn’t come to play? Do you think they sat in their cars waiting for the game to start and didn’t go out there?”.
But things got physical on two occasions. In Grand Final week in 1991 he had to be pulled off Luke Morfesse — now Fremantle’s media manager but then a journo for the West Australian — after he had criticised a West Coast media ban.
After another game in the early 90s, Malthouse crossed paths with veteran Herald Sun journo Daryl Timms, who recounted the incident on his retirement in 2016:
“Mick Malthouse once asked me at a press conference if I was deaf as well as stupid. A bit later, he came at me and grabbed me on the chest which became a big deal. But after that we got on pretty well. The next week after that Malthouse incident Kevin Sheedy grabbed me in a headlock at a press conference as a joke.”
Ross Lyon v Shane McInness
The Dockers coach didn’t appreciate it when the 3AW journo asked during a post-match press conference in 2013 if off-the-ball hits in the game against Geelong were part of a team plan.
He called the question “silly”, “garbage” and “beyond belief”, belittled McInnes by name — “you’re quite brilliant, Shane” — and ended with: “I think you’ve got to have a look at what you stand for as a journalist.”
"You're quite brilliant, Shane..." https://t.co/esqs3joCFF
— tony jones (@TJch9) May 2, 2018
Damien Hardwick v Patrick Keane
Keane, then the AFL media manager, made the cardinal sin of leaving his phone on during a press conference after Richmond was knocked out of the finals in 2015.
Making matters worse, he had organised the presser and told journos there to turn off their phones.
As Damien Hardwick was being asked about a controversial non-decision which cost his team late in the game, the ringing phone caught his attention.
“Seriously? F---ing moron,” the Tigers coach hissed.
Keane actually missed the spray because he’d already scurried out the door the moment the phone had gone off.
“I had my phone blocking outside calls but not internally,” Keane told the Herald Sun. “And I wasn’t expecting them to call straight back.
“When it rang I knew it would be quicker to step out the door than actually turn it off.
“It was a fundamental phone rookie error.”
Dimma also took a swipe at Roger Oldridge in 2014 when the then Channel 10 reporter questioned his team’s hardness.
He asked: “I’m not saying your players are soft or anything like that, but are there players in your group who just don’t like the contest?’’
Hardwick replied: “You can’t say that, mate. I could say that about your journalism. If you’re a soft journalist, you’re a terrible journalist. You play AFL footy, mate, you’ve got to be tough.’’
He added Oldridge was “lucky you didn’t wear a left hook’’ for asking the question.
Mark Thompson v Brad Ottens’ critics
It’s not unusual for coaches to go into bat for their players, but ‘Bomber’ took it to another level in 2005.
Brad Ottens arrived at the end of 2004 in a trade with Richmond and took some time to warm up at his new club.
When a journo asked about his ruckman at a post-match press conference, Thompson blew up: “For some silly reason, you people want to assassinate him. It’s just rubbish. You people, all of you, ALL OF YOU, leave him alone!”
Ottens laughed when reminded of the comments in an interview with the AFL Record six years later: “It was good of ‘Bomber’ to do that. I wasn’t sure where I was at, but for him to publicly come out like that proved I wasn’t just dreaming about everyone being on my back.”
Ottens had the last laugh, winning premierships with the Cats in 2007, 09 and 2011. We will spare Tiger fans a reminder of what they received in the trade.
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Allan Jeans v Peter McKenna
The legendary Hawthorn coach wasn’t known for taking pot shots but he lost his cool in a 1985 TV interview the day after Leigh Matthews broke the jaw of Geelong midfielder Neville Bruns in a behind-the-play incident that ended up in court.
Jeans was being quizzed by Peter McKenna on World of Sport’s “club corner” when he replied to persistent questions about the incident with veiled threats to bring out skeletons in McKenna’s closet.
Fast-forward to the 2:10 mark of the video below to see his response — and watch to the end for the bizarre ending to the interview featuring legend Jack Dyer.
Carl Ditterich v Trevor Grant
Ditterich was a brilliant and volatile ruckman who took the job of Melbourne captain coach in 1979, and was responsible for possibly the scariest and most bizarre coach v journo run-in in footy history.
Trevor Grant, a fine writer who passed away in 2017 after a 40-year media career, recounted the tale in 2007, and we can’t improve on his words:
“Forget Mick Malthouse and those drill sergeant looks. When you have an apoplectic Carl Ditterich bearing down upon you naked from the waist up, you tend to feel a chill all the way through to the bone marrow.
“Indeed, when the towel preserving his modesty started to slip south, in the tunnel outside the dressing rooms at VFL Park in 1979, I could not imagine at the time there had ever been a scarier sight in the history of football.
“Ditterich was always a difficult customer for reporters in search of post-match comments. On this day, which had brought another loss during his unsuccessful two-year stint as the Demons’ captain-coach, he was more grumpy and evasive than ever.
“The journalists’ terror alert moved rapidly to critical after he took exception to a muffled derogatory comment from the pack about his lack of co-operation. ‘Don’t you ever come back here,’ he bellowed as he waved a fist and chased me and my colleague Ron Carter, The Age chief football writer, out of the rooms.
“He didn’t have to worry. I wouldn’t have been game to re-enter his orbit without a decent disguise. Luckily for me, he was gone from the game a year later and went off to the bush in search of anonymity and life free from pesky reporters.”
Tony Lockett v Eddie McGuire
He wasn’t a coach but we can’t leave out the former St Kilda and Sydney champ taking out his frustrations on a young TV reporter in 1998.
Eddie McGuire wanted the latest news on Plugger’s broken ankle and the hulking full-forward took exception after Eddie and his cameraman followed him inside the Mercy Hospital. Find out what happened next in the video below.
Lockett also had a run-in with long-time Herald Sun chief footy writer Mike Sheahan.
He didn’t take kindly to an article in which Sheahan criticised Lockett after his vicious elbow that broke the nose of Sydney’s Peter Caven and led to an eight-match suspension.
In an article in 2011 chronicling the biggest stories of his career, Sheahan wrote:
“Sometime later, my colleague Jon Anderson called out to me in the office one Sunday afternoon: ‘Call for you.’
“He orchestrated the transfer, I picked up the phone, said hello and heard the chilling words: ‘It’s Robert Hession here (Lockett’s manager). We’re not having this conversation, but if ‘Plugger’ sees you in the street, he’s going to f’n kill you.’ Bang.”
Sheahan said he encountered Plugger again in a passageway under the SCG several years later: “I saw my life pass in front of me, muttered a limp ‘Hello Tony’ and shut my eyes. With the game going on, he could have strangled me there and then and made good his escape. Mercifully, he strode forward, seemingly oblivious to the coward squeezing by, although he had the look of an assassin.”
“I may have had Roger Merrett’s hands round my neck at one time and had an altercation of sorts with Peter Daicos, but it was the confrontation with Plugger that I will remember until I die.”
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