Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\nDespite that, the league left Geelong officials to handle the situation.<\/p>\n
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The Cats issued an apology and declared future post-season events \u201cwill not continue in this current form\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we will take this moment to further educate our people on expectations and club and community standards,\u201d Geelong said in a statement after being urged by the AFL to act.<\/p>\n
Swann even declared that in future it would be more likely the AFL would leave clubs to handle similar situations and the league would only step in if required.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou might see that change, as I said, I think these are club issues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will step in if we have to, but we\u2019ll let the clubs deal with it.\u201d <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a response in stark contrast to 12 months ago when the AFL suspended six GWS players and fined seven others, including captain Toby Greene, for their conduct at an end-of-season function. <\/p>\n
Josh Fahey copped a four-game ban, while Jake Riccardi, Joe Fonti, Toby McMullin, Harvey Thomas and Cooper Hamilton were banned for two games.<\/p>\n
Greene and other senior Giants players Sam Taylor, Tom Green, Lachie Keeffe, Harry Perryman, Connor Idun and Lachie Whitfield were fined $5000 each.<\/p>\n
Those penalties were handed out despite the behaviour, which included inappropriate costumes and comedy skits, happening in a private function room with no social media presence, unlike the very public display from Cats players. <\/p>\n
It left Matthews questioning why there was no league action against Geelong. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have obviously been an interested observer, but this is a broader AFL issue. We need more consistency,\u201d he told SEN ahead of the club\u2019s best and fairest count. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing that happened this week is I was getting messages from players and staff saying, \u2018So, Geelong is going to start the season with players suspended?\u2019. That\u2019s the difficulty.<\/p>\n
\u201cCredit to Geelong because they put out a statement, they said this was unacceptable, they apologised. The question could also be \u2014 is there a consequence?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not targeting Geelong in any way, it\u2019s just that one year ago we dealt with all sorts of consequences and they dragged on for months with continued public discussion around it. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a framework that the fans, the players and the clubs understand. Because at the moment there\u2019s what\u2019s happened, and then everybody is guessing about what happens next.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GWS boss Dave Matthews has called out the lack of consistency from the AFL after Geelong players escaped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12093,55,42255,118007,47983,82578,118011,13659,6278,14434,43,86683,60275,27700,50076,11296,118010,118009,44,118012,35459,118008,12144,1314,91229,118006,19086,14392,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-184495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-another-fine-day","tag-australian-football-league","tag-bailey-smith","tag-comedy-skits","tag-community-standards","tag-connor-idun","tag-dave-matthews","tag-geelong-cats","tag-greg-swann","tag-harvey-thomas","tag-headlines","tag-jake-riccardi","tag-joe-fonti","tag-josh-fahey","tag-lachie-keeffe","tag-lachie-whitfield","tag-league-action","tag-league-officials","tag-news","tag-post-season-celebrations","tag-post-season-events","tag-private-function-room","tag-sam-taylor","tag-social-media","tag-social-media-posts","tag-social-media-presence","tag-toby-greene","tag-toby-mcmullin","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184495","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=184495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}