AFL: Eddie McGuire defends himself against accusations of hypocrisy

Eddie McGuire has launched a passionate response after being accused of his “ridiculous” and “hypocritical” defence of a Magpies star.

Eddie McGuire isn’t backing down.

Eddie McGuire has defended himself in response to critics accusing the Collingwood president of being hypocritical when it comes to AFL players breaching COVID-19 restrictions.

Magpies vice-captain Steele Sidebottom recently copped a four-game ban for breaking protocols, needing to be driven home by police two weekends ago after drinking too much and becoming disoriented following home visits to injured teammate Jeremy Howe and Collingwood employee Daniel Wells.

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Last week McGuire said he was “proud” of Sidebottom for self-reporting to the club and was adamant he won’t strip the midfielder of his leadership credentials — sparking a fiery TV debate with Essendon legend Matthew Lloyd on Footy Classified.

McGuire has since come under fire for protecting Sidebottom so passionately, given on April 29 he called for $100,000 fines and season-long suspensions for players found guilty of breaching protocols and putting the AFL season in jeopardy.

Channel 9 presenter Tony Jones said on the Sunday Footy Show McGuire “was building a defence that was just riddled with holes” while fellow Sunday Footy Show panellist and reporter Damian Barrett said if the Pies president wanted to defend Sidebottom, he should have been “very mindful of what you’ve said previously, publicly, strongly, about player behaviour relating to the COVID-19 breaches”.

“When you look back on this it does seem highly hypocritical for him to have this view on April 29 and then another one this week,” Barrett said.

In a column for AFL.com.au, Barrett added McGuire’s “ridiculously defiant public response” to the Sidebottom scandal was “stupid practice as well as hypocritical”.

EDDIE BATS AWAY ACCUSATIONS OF HYPOCRISY

Collingwood said in a statement the penalty handed out to Sidebottom was “excessive, inconsistent with recent protocol breaches and contestable”.

But speaking to co-host Luke Darcy on his Triple M Melbourne breakfast radio show, McGuire tried to justify why it wasn’t hypocritical for him to defend Sidebottom after calling for $100,000 fines for other players who broke guidelines.

“No one seems to get nuances in this world and everybody wants to go for the ‘gotcha’ and ‘you’re a hypocrite’ and all the rest of it,” McGuire said on the Hot Breakfast.

“That was at a situation, what was that, April 29, when people were locked up. I think it was the Fremantle Dockers blokes had had a party or whatever it was, the situation there.

“I was involved and have been involved in the (AFL) war cabinet, so I was intimately involved in how much money was at stake and how parlous the whole thing was.

“We weren’t playing at that stage, right, so we were talking about possibly going back into hubs and we were thinking forward into those sorts of situations.

“So (Matthew) Lloydy comes up with, ‘Oh there’ll be other blokes who do it’. We know that there was going to be transgressions. My point was that the AFL, I believed, needed to go hard from the word go, OK? That’s where it was at that stage.

“The AFL for their own decision and right or wrong, I’m not saying they’re right or wrong, but they decided that they wouldn’t go that hard when we had a number of transgressions including people ending up in hospital … they didn’t go that hard.

“My point then, as going into that was, you really have to go hard on this to make sure the players, who maybe don’t read the papers or don’t get it sometimes or as Lloydy said they’ll muck up, you go hard to set the tone. So they (the AFL) didn’t set the tone in that situation. They gave one and two week suspensions and bits and pieces there.

“The point about going hard I think was well made. Last week what happened was Steele Sidebottom, he did something ridiculous and he got a four-week suspension.

“The bottom line is Steele Sidebottom and Collingwood accepted the decision so there’s no hypocrisy in that at all.”

Steele Sidebottom will be out of action for four weeks.

McGuire continued: “I still believe that they should have come out, the AFL, and made it very, very onerous any suspensions or penalties that were there.

“When it came to Steele Sidebottom’s time, we looked at it (and) compared to what the AFL had put as the table of suspensions, it was on the heavy side.

“It’s the most heavy of suspensions. In the context of what we believe and where we were last week, we agree with it. I don’t understand the hypocrisy.”

Darcy suggested footy fans are questioning why McGuire would use such strong language about previous breaches and call for serious penalties, but say he is “proud” of the way Sidebottom copped his punishment on the chin.

“I stand by that (calls for $100,000 fines), that’s why we accept it (Sidebottom’s ban) and there was no appeal last week,” McGuire said. “I don’t understand the situation. I’ve been hard on penalties, yeah, and we got a hard penalty last week and we accepted it.

“I would’ve thought it’s pretty simple.

“For the record again, I did call for heavy sanctions, the AFL decided not to in those situations … that’s alright, it’s not a criticism they decided to go down that way.

“When we accepted the heaviest of sanctions so far and we made the point, accepted the penalty without appeal and moved on.”

McGuire will always do what he can to protect his beloved Pies.

‘YOU’RE MISSING THE POINT’

Darcy then asked McGuire if, given his time again, he would “pull your language back”, leading to an exchange where the Collingwood supremo accused the Western Bulldogs legend of “missing the point”.

Darcy: “So if you had your time again you wouldn’t just pull your language back a little bit around …”

McGuire: “What, back on April 29?”

Darcy: “Just in terms of having 800 players put through this period of time, the fact that you probably suggest that the protocols are changing, the social distancing is changing, the likelihood is that you’re going to have people make mistakes including your own players at your own club.”

McGuire: “Darce, again, and this is not a criticism of you, you’re missing the point. This time last week they were going to close down the borders and not let clubs in because the premiers of various states thought the AFL had gone easy.”

Darcy: “No I’m not missing that point at all.”

McGuire: “Well I’m making the point then. When I first said that on April 29, we were highly aware of the situations that were going to bring the whole season undone. So there we were.”

Darcy: “And at the same time we understand the nuances of when a player has a great friend who’s injured (Howe), you want to support him, you want to go to his house.”

McGuire: “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Darcy: “And then these things inevitably happen Ed at various stages and I suppose what people have taken umbrage with you over the weekend is that they think you have a different set of language around a Collingwood player than you do around other players in the competition, rightly or wrongly.”

McGuire: “That’s OK and I totally disagree with that and I think that’s not the situation.”