Caroline Wilson has unleashed on Bailey Smith five months after his offensive social media post during the AFL Mad Monday celebrations.
The Geelong Cats star player set tongues wagging in October last year after sharing an Instagram post poking fun at the sports journalist.
Smith’s teammate Max Holmes, who was dressed as Seven’s AFL reporter as part of the Cats’ Mad Monday dress-up party, posed for a picture alongside the 25-year-old midfielder, who was dressed as Legends of the Fall’s Tristan Ludlow.
However, Smith could be seen flipping the bird in the picture, which he captioned: “Caro has never looked better.”
Furthermore, he accompanied the caption with a crying face and a dripping water emoji, which can often hold sexual connotations.
The post received major backlash at the time, which saw the team apologise for the inappropriate Mad Monday costumes and promise that the annual end-of-season event would no longer “continue in this current form”.
Now, Wilson has taken aim at Smith and the Geelong Cats, dubbing the incident “disgusting” while calling the footy star “gutless”.
“My issue is the emoji he [Smith] put to an Instagram post about me,” Wilson said on Melbourne radio station 3AW over the weekend.
“It was disgusting, it was embarrassing,” she confessed, adding: “I was overseas at the time. My youngest daughter had to tell me what it meant.”
The 65-year-old went on to label the viral moment as “horrible” before expressing her disappointment in Smith, as well as the footy club’s reaction.
“Bailey Smith is gutless, and he makes horrible comments about women and is irresponsible.”
She went on: “What really disappointed me is leaders at that club, I think, have really lowered their own standards by trying to build him up and defend him and I include Chris Scott in that.”
However, the AFL journalist did publicly pardon Holmes, who allegedly reached out to her privately in the wake of the incident to offer an apology.
“Max Holmes got in touch immediately. He dressed up as me, and I didn’t have a massive issue with that. He was deeply embarrassed and apologetic,” she revealed.
Skynews.com.au has reached out to the Geelong Cats for comment.