Veteran AFL journalist Damian Barrett has criticised Collingwood’s handling of the trade period, calling their handling of the media “as bad as I’ve seen”.
The Magpies traded out Adam Treloar, Jaidyn Stephenson, Tom Phillips and Atu Bosenavulagi as part of an attempted salary cap dumping for minimal return.
Barrett was particularly critical of president Eddie McGuire, who, despite having his own local three-hour breakfast radio show, chose to stay silent on anything to do with Collingwood.
“They’ve got a president who is one of the biggest media personalities in the history of this country who was muted, who muted himself throughout the period,” Barrett told The Sounding Board podcast.
“I would doubt very much that it was (Eddie’s decision to stay silent) and if it was, it would fly in the face of everything he’s ever done in the media space.
“I don’t know and I don’t care to know because it doesn’t matter. We covered it on Trade Radio and clearly that became an issue on the inside of the club, that trade radio and other platforms were talking about it.
“I still don’t believe one word anyone has said about this publicly by the way 100 per cent. There’s obviously truth in the middle as there always is somewhere, but to think that Nathan Buckley mopping up via an arrangement to think he can come out and say things and everyone’s going to say ‘there’s the version we’re going to take forward’, I’m not buying that aspect of it even.
“It was pathetic listening to Eddie over the last three weeks where he either did not engage in conversation around the biggest story we’ve had in this period or chose not and then we he did offer contributions to it, he gave nothing.
“This is a man who has bought into other clubs’ issues regularly over the journey.
“Of course he is (in a tough spot), but that’s part of the point. He’s on radio himself for three hours every single day and he didn’t want to contribute to the biggest story going around?
“The other aspect to, and it needs to be thrown in too, one of the senior people of that club when it comes to this space and decisions made about players at that club is Geoff Walsh, who is a lifetime media hater.
“I don’t know whether Geoff Walsh formulated that policy, but you throw in everything we’ve just discussed, it’s got to this situation where this club has come out of it in a way that it didn’t need to endure.
“Just getting back to my point, watching it from afar and forgetting the Adam Treloar, Jaidyn Stephenson and Tom Phillips situations, just looking at it now as we can, if they had have got their public messaging right, even if the public messaging was a half-life, if that’s okay from the outset, everything else ends up being okay.
“You can retrofit the message after the event. If you don’t have a message at the outset of it, you’re in trouble.”
Nathan Buckley spoke on SEN on Monday morning and Craig Hutchison believes the Collingwood coach should have been the club’s spokesperson from the beginning.
“He is their best media performer. All this notion about ‘the list manager does this’, it’s rubbish. The coach’s fingerprints are on everything,” Hutchison said.
“He should have been the spokesman for the footy club through the period of time.
“It’s a curveball and he could have done more good by doing it and Eddie is too emotional to be that guy to be honest. Geoff Walsh is too defensive.
“They threw Ned Guy to the wolves. He’s the guy out of his depth and he was trying to row a boat that didn’t exist.”
Barrett was equally critical of Collingwood’s handling of the Kim Ravaillion situation.
“To think they can advise an individual on how he or she may want to live their life over an arrangement they, as a couple, have chosen to make, goodness me,” he said.
McGuire finally spoke candidly this morning on radio, saying the media has a vendetta against Collingwood.
“It’s a ‘big story’ because the other stories have been done to death for 10 days and Collingwood didn’t do a whole lot on trade radio and things like that. The media always like to come after people who aren’t racing to be on those types of things,” he told Triple M.
“If there’s a criticism it’s that Collingwood have looked after players too good as far as the salary cap was concerned and long-term contracts and players have been sensational back-ending their contracts to make it happen because there was a window of opportunity.
“Every club does that in that window of opportunity to try and get there. We’ve just made the pivot, it’s as simple as that.”