{"id":151389,"date":"2025-09-18T05:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T05:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/151389\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T05:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T05:41:08","slug":"cats-coach-chris-scott-regrets-run-in-with-afl-staffer-after-qualifying-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/151389\/","title":{"rendered":"Cats coach Chris Scott regrets run-in with AFL staffer after qualifying final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geelong coach Chris Scott says long-held frustration with the AFL was behind his regrettable outburst at a junior league employee following the Cats’ qualifying final earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Addressing recent off-field issues at Geelong \u2014 including an incident involving player Bailey Smith<\/a> \u2014 for more than 20 minutes on Thursday, Scott acknowledged he had let himself down.<\/p>\n

But the dual premiership coach denied reports he had been aggrieved about the presence of an accredited reporter \u2014 who is blind and works for Vision Australia Radio \u2014 at his post-qualifying final media conference on September 5.<\/p>\n

An AFL staffer was left in tears after Scott spoke with her following the Cats’ 38-point victory over the Brisbane Lions at the MCG.<\/p>\n

That report emerged after photographer Alison Wynd was left “rattled” when Smith aggressively singled her out for taking snaps of him last week at a training session open to the media at Kardinia Park.<\/p>\n

Scott and Smith were not sanctioned by the AFL.<\/p>\n

Smith abuses News Corp photographer<\/a><\/p>\n

Cats superstar Bailey Smith swears at a veteran Geelong Advertiser photographer for taking photos of him at a “vision opportunity” training session, where media members are invited by the club.<\/p>\n

“There’s just 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 the way we were feeling about certain issues,” Scott said during a 36-minute media conference on Thursday.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t handle a certain situation as well as I would have liked to and let my frustrations get the better of me.”<\/p>\n

Scott implied the incident had been leaked by someone to “get one up”.<\/p>\n

“I also acknowledge that it was a private conversation, and sometimes private conversations become public, and it would become a lot easier if you actually did litigate all those issues in an attempt to help people understand why those frustrations were so acute,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But I don’t think that’s fair.<\/p>\n

“There’s probably been frustrations with the AFL over a period, probably back to March 2020 (the start of the COVID pandemic), but that’s across the whole industry.<\/p>\n

“I can’t think of a situation where I’ve portrayed what I thought were private conversations just to get one up on our side of the debate.<\/p>\n

“Do you then just let the floodgates open and release all the contents of those private conversations?<\/p>\n

“Or do you say no, even if we’re going to be the victim of some extrapolation or some innuendo \u2026 that’s what I’m prepared to bear.”<\/p>\n

Scott opens up on Smith<\/p>\n

When speaking about Smith, Scott said the midfielder was “less trusting of the media than I think he should be”.<\/p>\n

Scott and Smith were left fuming when what they thought was a private conversation at training was broadcast on the AFL’s website in July.<\/p>\n

\"Bailey<\/p>\n

Bailey Smith has been involved in several well-publicised incidents this season. (Getty Images: Paul Kane)<\/p>\n

“I’m pretty comfortable that while we acknowledge we’re not perfect, that we’ve got a pretty good track record,” Scott said.<\/p>\n

“It’s a contradiction almost: a highly marketable public person (Smith), who puts a lot of it out there, but then [is] intensely personal about some issues.<\/p>\n

“Not only did they (AFL Media) choose to use it, they put subtitles underneath it, and actually extrapolated some of the things that were said and got it wrong.”<\/p>\n

Smith took part in Geelong’s captain’s run at Kardinia Park on Thursday but left when media were allowed into the ground to watch.<\/p>\n

Scott said Smith was in a good headspace to help the Cats try to win through to a grand final by beating Hawthorn at the MCG on Friday night.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Geelong coach Chris Scott says long-held frustration with the AFL was behind his regrettable outburst at a junior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[638,64,63,42255,3237,2475,12923,13658,6854,84993,101571,19095,64903,85,101570],"class_list":["post-151389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bailey-smith","tag-brisbane-lions","tag-cats","tag-chris-scott","tag-geelong","tag-hawthorn","tag-junior","tag-outburst","tag-preliminary-final","tag-qualifying-final","tag-sports","tag-staffer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151389","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=151389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}