“I can see how it looks”: Mooney concedes on controversial Cats/Giants interview

Cameron Mooney has given his version of events as to how he narrowly avoided a conflict of interest in Round 11 while working for Fox Footy – but says the original story was “a bit of a beat up”.

Nine’s Caroline Wilson reported on Footy Classified earlier this week that Mooney missed a scheduled half-time interview with Cats coach Chris Scott during Geelong’s eventual loss to GWS.

But only minutes before, Mooney – who has this year taken up a part-time coaching role at GWS – was seen in the Giants rooms getting around several of his players.

“Geelong were a bit surprised that Cam Mooney - as a coach at GWS - was going to be in the Geelong rooms interviewing Chris Scott,” Wilson said on Friday night.

“I don't think they had thought a lot about it but with hindsight they were a bit surprised. And it was only a production stuff-up that meant he wasn't there.”

Speaking on SEN’s The Warm Up, Mooney shed light on what he was doing in the Giants rooms.

“I love Caro, but a little bit overboard there… it’s a bit of a blow-up, I can see how it looks,” he said to the original report.

“I’ll give you an explanation. Stephen Coniglio did his shoulder I got told by my (Fox) producer to go in and ask… yes I am slightly employed by the Giants as a part-time marking coach.

“So I got told to go in there and ask the doc about Coniglio’s shoulder. I was in there for around two minutes max, I was speaking to the Doc for about a minute and a half.

“As I walked out I gave the boys in the forward group a tap on the head, said, ‘boys, you’re all doing well, congratulations, keep it up’ and then I walked out.

“That was my involvement of my coaching at the Giants.”

Mooney says he is rarely at Giants training, perhaps once a month, and has no role to play on game day.

His position is further complicated as a great of the Geelong Football Club, having played 210 games in the hoops before his retirement in 2011.

But Mooney says the potential conflict of interest wasn’t why Fox missed the interview with Scott.

“We had an interview with Chris Scott at the end of half-time, but my floor producer and I were of the belief it was on the ground but it was in the rooms. We missed that,” he added.

“We put our hands up, that was our stuff up. That was the reason we missed it.”