When you’re part of the club, the club forgives

Eddie McGuire is an omnipresent and powerful Melbourne personality.

He doesn’t need anyone defending him. Similarly he didn’t need the AFL to be so lily-livered with its response. But that’s Melbourne; if you’re part of the club, the club will forgive.

McGuire should appreciate the impact of his lazy language in insulting journalist Caroline Wilson and then in his soft apology. Words and wit ensured the young boy from Broadmeadows could mix it with eastern suburbs private schoolboys. And they’ve since propelled him through a mostly brilliant career in TV and radio.

But in Melbourne, he’s more than a media star. He’s president of the town’s “biggest” club and a mover and shaker with few peers.

That’s a big problem because McGuire is both entertainer and authority. It is an odd fit. As a radio and TV host, who presents 15 hours of radio a week and at least four hours of live television, his mind is in a constant whirl, looking for the next segue, the next gag, the next tease. Of course he’ll put his foot in it but his words aren’t received as the inanities of another FM breakfast radio idiot. They carry great authority.

A contradiction in McGuire’s behaviour is how his gaffes have conflicted with how he uses his authority away from the media. The night before his Adam Goodes insult, McGuire was raising funds for indigenous scholarships. And Collingwood has established the Magpie Nest, which provides community housing for the homeless, including houses exclusively for women. The psychologists can give that meaning.

Anyway, in Melbourne, McGuire is used to being the authority, which is why his ongoing stoush with successive Sydney Swans presidents has been so bruising. He doesn’t expect anyone to stand up to him; at least for any sustained period.

And Fairfax Media’s Wilson has stood up to him. You can count the number of other journalists who have also done so on one hand. Most are scared; McGuire can be a relentless opponent with many microphones.

Wilson writes fearlessly and, when wrong, as she has recently conceded about her musings on Kangaroos president James Brayshaw, she’s admitted it. Which goes to a point beyond McGuire.

He, Brayshaw and Danny Frawley’s “joke” about dunking her wasn’t just a clumsy faux pas that required an unequivocal retraction. It was just another instance of the Melbourne AFL fraternity’s almost pathological negativity towards Wilson.

As a Geelong-born AFL fan and journalist who can’t get enough footy media, the industry aggro directed at Wilson has had me flummoxed for years. I cannot see any reason for it other than unadulterated sexism. She’s a target because she’s very good, and she’s female. I can’t name another “very good” male journo who cops it like Wilson. Or cops it, full stop.

The AFL can dress itself up in as many pink ponchos as it wants but the pillorying of Wilson remains an embarrassment. Her stoicism has been noble, particularly weekly on Nine’s Footy Classified as the Eddie-lite, Craig Hutchison, persists with his needling of her every opinion.

The media boys will protest it’s all “friendly banter” and “good fun”, just like “in the locker room”. But there are idiots dotted throughout the AFL media ecosystem who bypass scrutiny or at the very least don’t have their professionalism and gender attacked regularly. But they’re male. The AFL — all of you — needs to man up on its treatment of Wilson.

Michael Bodey is the author of Eddie: The Rise and Rise of Eddie McGuire