SEN Chief Broadcaster Gerard Whateley has slammed Fremantle for their handling of the Jesse Hogan situation and for their use of the term ‘clinical anxiety’.
The Dockers were called out by the medical community for use of the term, which is apparently completely made up.
Whateley blames situations like this for the suspicion that clubs and players are using mental illness to justify poor behaviour.
“The mental illness side of this has been really challenging on a number of fronts in this scenario,” Whateley told SEN’s Crunch Time.
“It’s been marked by a distinct lack of sympathy. The lack of sympathy has been from former players, which I think has been really interesting.
“David Schwartz went really hard, Karl Langdon went really hard, Malcolm Blight too.
“Then you tie into Fremantle tried to put a veneer on this and they’ve been called out on ‘clinical anxiety’ by the medical community as made up.
“That’s a really bad misstep and when the players association and Paul Marsh condemns those who question someone brave enough to put their mental health issues out there, this is why.
“This is what’s happened in the last six weeks, there’s been a build up of suspicion around mental illness being used as a cop out for poor behaviour and then you get a club who really does botch this.
“That statement they put out was long on detail, but short on the actual story and there were holes that got picked in it along the way.
“It does Jesse no favours, it does the players broadly no favours, I don’t think it does the club any favours and certainly the disconnect between the football following public and where the players are right now, that divide is so wide and this incident has played a really significant role in it and it sits with Fremantle and the use of ‘clinical anxiety’.
“They wanted it to sound like this was beyond approach, you can’t question this it’s clinical anxiety, except that they made it up. The wording of it mattered.”