Rival coaches have backed the need to have an occasional spray at players as debate continues on the weekend effort by Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley.
Buckley’s public dressing down of his ruckman Jarrod Witts had shades of the famous Malcolm Blight/David Pittman incident of 1997.
On AFL360 last night, Essendon coach Mark Thompson said sometimes these things have to happen.
“There should be more of it,” he said, although he may have been joking.
Reflecting on last weekend’s incident in which Buckley tugged the jumper and yelled at Witts on the bench during the third quarter of his side’s loss to Hawthorn at the MCG, Thompson said he had probably done the same thing at some stage.
A two-time premiership mentor at Geelong before becoming Essendon’s senior coach in 2014, Thompson says footy is an emotional game.
“I probably have. A little bit,” Thompson said.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. It’s an emotional game.
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“Some players sometimes need a bit of a jolt.”
Adelaide fans know what he’s talking about.
Crows coach Malcolm Blight shocked the football world in 1997 by labelling David Pittman “the most pathetic ruckman I’ve seen in my entire life in footy” after a loss to Richmond.
Pittman later recounted that at the time he had sought a meeting with Blight, who said he didn’t mean it to be personal.
“I said, ‘if you didn’t mean it then either you retract it or we go our separate ways’,” Pittman recalled.
Blight later corrected his description of Pittman as relating to “one quarter of football and not the player as a whole”.
The record shows, however, that Blight’s call might have been a smart one; the 1997 season turned out to be one of Pittman’s best and he played a key role in the Crows’ premiership side that year.
Sydney’s 2005 premiership coach Paul Roos, now in his first season at Melbourne, said he was also guilty of going too far with players.
“All credit to Bucks too. He sends a tweet out after the game and said he was probably a bit overt today,” Roos told the program.
“So no harm, no foul. Move on.
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“It’s a good talking point and it’s good to have a couple of coaches talking about and explaining the situation.
“But I thought Bucks handled it well at the end of the day and probably was pretty calculated when he did it.”
Witts responded by kicking two goals in the last quarter.
Roos recalled his own clash with Sydney player Ben Mathews, who’s now an assistant coach at Melbourne.
“I gave him a spray after the game,” Roos said.
“And I said to the players on the Monday that’s just uncalled for. Benny was one of our most professional players.
“He was underdone.
“He had a bad game. I singled him out.
“I was really not happy. I apologised to him and apologised to the team.
“That’s basically what Bucks is doing as well.”
Hawthorn great Jason Dunstall said it didn’t look good.
“I don’t think it’s ideal,” Dunstall told FoxFooty’s On The Couch program.
“Bucks probably thinks in hindsight ‘gee I wish I hadn’t done that so openly’.
“We’re placing a lot of faith in the player just to cop it. Because if he does anything other than cop it, it becomes a huge story.”
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