Collingwood coach Craig McRae has responded to Magpies fans booing Sydney champion Lance Franklin in Sunday’s win at the MCG.
After Franklin was booed on occasion throughout the game, Sydney coach John Longmire expressed his confusion as to why he was being targeted.
Following the incident, Collingwood, the AFL and Sydney all released statements coming out against the booing.
McRae, club captain Darcy Moore and CEO Craig Kelly all signed the Collingwood statement and the coach says he simply wants fans to respect champions of the game.
Now four days removed from the incident, McRae says that while he’s okay with fans barracking in different ways, he just wanted to push a message of respect for Franklin.
“I’ve said this before, I go home and I was watching the footy with my six-year-old daughter - little Charlie girl - and she goes, ‘Dad, why are they doing that? Why are they booing that player?’,” McRae said on SEN The Run Home.
“It was young (Jason) Horne-Francis and I said, ‘I don't know why they're doing this’, this guy in my eyes, he's a rising star, he’s a great talent.
“I said to little Charlie, ‘I don't know why, darling, but we don't boo, we don't boo in our house’.
“I've shared this in my press conferences, but if you choose to barrack a different way to me, that's ok.
“On Good Friday, you might eat meat, I eat fish, that's the way I live my life and I'm not even religious, I just choose to eat fish.
“But if you want to eat red meat, you go for it, you do you.”
While McRae believes it’s unfair that the wider talk around booing has become Collingwood-centric, he says that he hopes to take the club’s fans “along for the ride” as they push to respect the opposition.
“But in terms of this, I think it's unfortunate, I think it's become Collingwood-centric,” McRae said.
“I don't think that's fair on our fan base … are we booing more than ever at the moment? I'm not sure if that's true.
“Where I probably wanted to lead to this in regard to the statement is when I started the job, I said to the playing group really clearly, ‘We want to be winners’.
“As I'm trying to do with my daughter, I want to teach respect. I want to teach and educate the closest to me, I'm realising that if you want to change big things, you can do it by little, little steps.
“My little step right now is right within my reach with my daughter and then my players about talking about winners and respect and what that looks like.
“I want to take our fans along for the ride and then educate them about who we want to be.
“You eat red meat, and we eat fish on Good Friday, you do you, but right now for us, we want to respect the champions of the game and that was all that was.”
McRae also revealed how the highly-publicised statement came about and explained the part he played in the message being conveyed.
“Craig Kelly rang me on Monday morning … he gets a lot of stuff done, he’s a star, we’re so lucky to have him, Graham Wright and Jeff Browne leading our footy club,” McRae said.
“He rang me and said, ‘Oh look, we want to discuss this situation’, I said, ‘Ok, well, what do you think?
“We spoke in terms of what message we wanted to put out.
“For me, it was about respect … I want my little girl to cheer for Horne-Francis.
“We went to Adelaide and Nick Daicos was getting booed and I thought, ‘Did I miss something?’.
“Like what are we doing? This is the star of the game and maybe it's a bit of the tall poppy syndrome that we have in our country.
“But I wanted to say, for me being a winner is respecting the champions of the game.
“That's the part that I played.”
Collingwood fans get their next chance to support their side when they host GWS at the MCG on Sunday.