St Kilda captain Jack Steele has issued a response after SEN’s Sam Edmund revealed that the Saints inadvertently exposed sensitive audio from its coaches’ box to rival clubs.
Edmund’s report on Wednesday, which the club confirmed, stated that the Saints accidentally uploaded audio of Ross Lyon and his assistants from Friday’s practice match against Essendon to a Dropbox which was available to download league-wide.
Steele admitted that the leak was disappointing but put it down to an honest internal mistake.
“It was quite disappointing really that it’s happened,” Steele told SEN Afternoons at the AFL captain’s day.
“But it was a mistake, it was an honest mistake from our club and some of the people involved.
“But you can’t do much about it now and Ross addressed it to the playing group before it all came out, which we liked from Ross to get on the front foot.
“To accept what’s happened and tell us exactly what happened was pretty important for me as a player.”
Steele was pleased that Lyon addressed the group about the incident before the report emerged as he prefers knowing exactly what has transpired instead of learning himself from the media.
“I think it’s never great to hear things come out that aren’t from your club or your coach,” Steele explained.
“In the past things like this may have happened where we’ve found out about a certain situation on social media, and that’s not great to hear as a player and captain of the club that your mum and your best mate are hearing something before you do.
“For our coach to come out and do that as a player was awesome.”
Steele hopes the incident acts as a learning opportunity for those inside the club’s four walls.
“There’s heaps of people that have a lot of responsibility in getting this stuff right,” Steele said.
“Clearly it was a fair mistake, but it was never this person’s intention to leak this sort of information.
“There are a lot of people you need to trust and be on board with what we’re trying to do as a club.
“I think as time goes on we’ll probably learn and there may be higher security with this sort of stuff.
“It is something that we need to get better at going forward.”
The Saints will now turn their attention to a Round 1 clash against Fremantle at Marvel Stadium on March 19.