Geelong coach Chris Scott has admitted he mishandled an exchange with an AFL staffer following the Cats’ qualifying final win over Brisbane, saying weeks of frustrations with the League boiled over in the moment.
Scott revealed he apologised after the official was left in tears, but stressed the incident came after a string of issues he felt were not being properly addressed by the AFL.
‘I should have handled it better’
“I didn’t handle a certain situation as well as I would have liked to,” Scott said, speaking publicly for the first time since the clash. “Probably over a period … there’s been a few little issues that have popped up where we thought that maybe we could have communicated with the AFL a little bit better to help them understand how we’re feeling about certain issues.
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“I didn’t handle a certain situation as well as I would have liked to, and let my frustrations get the better of me, and for that I spoke to the person involved, and even from their side they acknowledged there were some frustrations that built up. I should have handled that situation better.”
The Cats coach also weighed in on Bailey Smith’s clash with a photographer at training last week, when the midfielder swore and flipped the bird. While CEO Steve Hocking phoned the photographer to apologise, Smith sent a text.
“Being a middle-aged man … I’m probably a phone call guy,” Scott said. “That would be my preference. I think the intention is the most important thing.”
Scott rejected the idea of a cultural problem at Geelong, insisting that mistakes were part of a human environment. “We’ve worked really hard for a long period of time to get ourselves to the situation where we’re really proud of the way we go about our business … while not accepting behaviour you don’t approve of, you do acknowledge that there’ll be hiccups along the way.”