according to journalist Jay Clark<\/a>, those claims were exaggerated with Merrett taking four shots on goal during an extra goal session at the same end of the practice facility.<\/p>\n\u201cHe completed the drill and then moved on as directed \u2026 after finishing the pre-planned set amount of shots,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
AFL360 hosts Garry Lyon and Gerard Whateley agreed that the latest attack on Merrett was \u201ca planted story\u201d and \u201ccharacter assassination\u201d.<\/p>\n
Joey: “I would love Merrett to stay” | 02:32<\/p>\n
\u201cThere ain\u2019t any chance in my eyes any way he\u2019s going back,\u201d Lyon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got players now that are going public and expressing their disappointment \u2013 for me that\u2019s the biggest one out of everything that\u2019s happened. Now you\u2019re getting the backgrounding going on \u2013 I think it\u2019s messy and unseemly.<\/p>\n
\u201cStories now emerging about the way he\u2019s treated AFLW \u2013 now that\u2019s a planted story. That doesn\u2019t make it\u2019s way into the public domain without someone maliciously, in my mind, wanting to plant that seed because you\u2019re saying that your captain is disrespecting your female football team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when it gets real messy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Panel react to Mitchell-Merrett question | 01:01<\/p>\n
Whateley said it was \u201cnigh on impossible to see\u201d Merrett return to the Bombers \u2013 where he still has two years left to run on his contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe character assassination is the worst part of this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly it hurts Merrett and totally understandable why he would be hurt by it. That is no way to do business \u2013 either the internal side of things, nor really we as a media I don\u2019t think.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no need to tear down a good man because he is the crossroads about where he wants to play his footy.\u201d<\/p>\n
While there\u2019s reports Merrett won\u2019t be present at the club best and fairest \u2013 where he\u2019s hotly tipped to be picking up his sixth Crichton Medal, there\u2019s now claims Merrett would be uninvited to sit at the Bombers Brownlow Medal table on Monday night \u2013 where he is expected the be the club\u2019s top vote getter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that\u2019s not true,\u201d Whateley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a bitter divorce \u2026 I would hope there\u2019s not an edict that says don\u2019t come \u2013 that would be nasty.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Zach Merrett trade saga has turned into \u201cfull-blown civil war at Tullamarine\u201d amid claims of a \u201ccharacter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9126,64,63,689,9203,99585,24417,99583,3499,1818,99582,1119,99586,10145,61,2105,28450,99581,36873,19125,15631,3465,647,677,99588,99587,12936,85,99589,99590,3254,660,99584],"class_list":["post-147352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-adelaide-crows","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-catherine-healey","tag-character-assassination","tag-civil-war","tag-club-figures","tag-daniel-pockett","tag-david-king","tag-female-football-team","tag-football-club","tag-full-blown-civil-war","tag-garry-lyon","tag-gerard-whateley","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-glenn-mcfarlane","tag-goal-session","tag-james-sicily","tag-jay-clark","tag-lauren-wood","tag-leigh-montagna","tag-melbourne","tag-oceania","tag-planted-story","tag-pre-planned-set-amount","tag-sam-mitchell","tag-sports","tag-story-leak","tag-top-vote-getter","tag-trade-saga","tag-victoria","tag-zach-merrett-aflw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}