Coach press conferences have been in the news this week as the AFL sent out a memo on Tuesday night reminding them not to be critical of umpiring.
Alastair Clarkson and Ken Hinkley were among the coaches who mentioned the umpiring in their post-game pressers following their respective losses on the weekend.
Four-time premiership coach Leigh Matthews reminisced back to 2001 on Sportsday to the only time he can remember using a press conference to get a pointed message across.
“In the week before the 2001 Grand Final, the Lions hadn’t played in a Grand Final ever, and we’re playing Essendon,” Matthews said.
“Kevin Sheedy was obviously the very experienced Essendon coach and I just decided to have a bit of a crack at Sheedy.
“I said the left side of his brain doesn’t know what the right side of his brain is doing.
“I almost did that for our players to say I’m going to have a crack at Sheeds, you have a crack at their team too.
“That was the only time to be honest I can think that I said something that I wanted to get out there for a particular reason.”
As for one press conference comment he wished he could take back, Matthews goes back to something he said in 2006.
“There were many times I said things that I wish I hadn’t said,” he said.
“In early 2006 it would have been, we’d played Geelong in Geelong, and post-game I remember Jason Akermanis’ commentary was that players were interchanging all the time and it was unfair to him because we didn’t interchange enough.
“And when I was asked about that not in the post-game but during the week, I made a stupid comment.
“I said, ‘players should just worry about getting a kick’ and then I thought that was a disrespectful thing to say because it’s basically Aker will take it like I’m being disrespectful to him.
“I would like to take that one back and there is probably many more over the time, but that one really sticks in my mind.”