‘He dived!’: Demons players laugh in Joel Selwood’s face as Cats star complains

Melbourne players openly laughed at Joel Selwood as the Geelong skipper argued in vain that a Demons star had fooled the umpire.

The look on the Melbourne players’ faces said it all.

As Geelong captain Joel Selwood argued with the umpire after giving away a 50m free kick in Friday night’s preliminary final, all the Demons could do was laugh.

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Max Gawn, Jack Viney, Jake Lever and Ed Langdon were grinning from ear to ear as the whistleblower refused to entertain Selwood’s complaints, all the while the Dees were queuing up for another shot at goal to extend their already healthy advantage.

Even the Melbourne trainer couldn’t stop smiling.

“He dived! He dived!” Selwood told the umpire early in the third quarter after being pinged for collecting Langdon high and pushing him off the ball after both players got tangled up with each other and fell over.

“He f***ing did! He f***ing dived!”

The umpire wasn’t buying it, and the Cats’ night only got worse from there.

Melbourne players could see the funny side to things. Photo: Fox Footy

Selwood is one of the most courageous players ever to lace up the boots in the AFL. He’s represented Geelong more than 300 times and will go down as one of the club’s all-time greats.

But, ironically given Friday night’s incident, at times the 33-year-old has been the subject of criticism from keyboard warriors on social media about an alleged tendency to stage for free kicks himself.

The Demons were already up by 34 points when Selwood pleaded his case and they piled on the pain with their best performance in recent memory. Seeking to end their 57-year wait for a premiership Melbourne maintained the rage to run out 19.11 (125) to 6.6 (42) winners.

Gawn led from the front, the Dees skipper booting five goals in one of the most memorable performances of his career. But he knows the job isn’t done yet and the win will count for nothing if his side can’t end the longest premiership drought in history.

“I haven’t done that before,” Gawn said of his goalkicking exploits on Channel 7 after the game.

“I’m not normally a goal kicker and got on the end of some of them.

“Like that stoppage goal, I probably won’t be able to do every again in my life.”

Originally published as ‘He dived!’: Demons players laugh in Joel Selwood’s face as Cats star complains