{"id":182817,"date":"2025-10-01T15:29:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T15:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/182817\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T15:29:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T15:29:14","slug":"league-disappointed-with-geelong-over-mad-monday-antics-cats-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/182817\/","title":{"rendered":"League disappointed with Geelong over Mad Monday antics; Cats statement"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Geelong Cats<\/a> have apologised for a controversial Mad Monday after the AFL expressed its disappointment over the playing group’s celebrations following their grand final loss to Brisbane.<\/p>\n

The Cats have often taken the end-of-season dress-up celebrations most seriously, especially with the costumes, but potentially crossed the line in a few instances this year, particularly with social media posting.<\/p>\n

The ever-controversial Bailey Smith<\/a> was naturally at the centre of the issues, particularly with his posting to Instagram. <\/p>\n

READ MORE: ‘Absolutely against this’: AFL great slams Eagles handout<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: AFL tradition dumped as rule changes locked in<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Bulldogs star’s cheeky response after airport spotting<\/a><\/p>\n

After teammate Max Holmes dressed up as journalist Caroline Wilson, Smith posted “Caro has never looked better” followed by a dripping water emoji. He was also giving the camera the middle finger in the photo with Holmes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bailey Smith (right) and Max Holmes.\u00a0Instagram<\/p>\n

Geelong apologised for the offence caused. <\/p>\n

“Certain costumes and associated social media posts were inappropriate and a significant error of judgment, and do not reflect our team-of-all commitment,” a statement read.<\/p>\n

“The club has decided future post-season events will not continue in this current form, and we will take this moment to further educate our people on expectations and club and community standards.”<\/p>\n

Port Adelaide great Kane Cornes was critical of Holmes’ decision to parody Wilson.<\/p>\n

“Imagine Max Holmes thinking it’s a good idea to disrespect a legend of Australian football media in Caroline Wilson, dressing up as her and trying to ridicule her and have a photo of that and put the caption alongside of that,” he told SEN on Monday.<\/p>\n

Holmes has dressed up as footy journalists in the past, including the likes of Mitch Cleary and Gerard Whateley. <\/p>\n

In another captain, Smith tagged Carlton forward Charlie Curnow, who hopes to get to Geelong this trade period, telling him to be at the celebrations next year.<\/p>\n

Smith also angered former West Coast player Mitch Brown<\/a>, who recently became the first openly bisexual ex-AFL player.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mitch Brown took aim at Bailey Smith on Instagram. \u00a0Instagram<\/p>\n

Brown urged him to “do better”, calling him “homophobic” and a “loser”.<\/p>\n

Smith later revealed that Dangerfield took his phone from him as the Mad Monday celebrations kicked on.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Wednesday, new AFL head of football Greg Swann said the league wasn’t happy with the antics. <\/p>\n

“We have spoken to Geelong and had a chat to (Cats chief) Steve Hocking. They’re dealing with it. We think clubs are best placed to deal with their players,” Swann said.<\/p>\n

“We’re not thrilled with what happened and nor are Geelong. I think there’ll be some steps taken and something coming out this afternoon around that.<\/p>\n

“We’ve pushed it down to them to deal with. We’ve had some chats with them about that.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully this afternoon you’ll see where that’s landed, and we’re happy with that.”<\/p>\n

Swann went on to strongly imply now that he’s in charge, he will be leaving these disciplinary actions up to the clubs themselves, instead of the AFL cracking down every other week like it was under the previous regime. <\/p>\n

“You might see that change. I think these are club issues. We will step in if we have to, but let the clubs deal with it,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Geelong Cats have apologised for a controversial Mad Monday after the AFL expressed its disappointment over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-182817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182817","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=182817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}