{"id":528023,"date":"2026-03-09T03:37:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T03:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/528023\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T03:37:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T03:37:15","slug":"disgusting-afl-journalist-caroline-wilsons-telling-six-word-response-to-that-bailey-smith-emoji-aimed-at-her-after-controversial-2025-mad-monday-celebrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/528023\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Disgusting\u2019: AFL journalist Caroline Wilson’s telling six-word response to THAT Bailey Smith emoji aimed at her after controversial 2025 Mad Monday celebrations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caroline Wilson has unleashed on Bailey Smith five months after his offensive social media post during the AFL Mad Monday celebrations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Geelong Cats star player set tongues wagging in October last year after sharing an Instagram post poking fun at the sports journalist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Harry<\/p>\n

However, Smith could be seen flipping the bird in the picture, which he captioned: \u201cCaro has never looked better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, he accompanied the caption with a crying face and a dripping water emoji, which can often hold sexual connotations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, Wilson has taken aim at Smith and the Geelong Cats, dubbing the incident “disgusting” while calling the footy star “gutless”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Drugs<\/p>\n

\u201cMy issue is the emoji he [Smith] put to an Instagram post about me,\u201d Wilson said on Melbourne radio station 3AW over the weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was disgusting, it was embarrassing,” she confessed, adding: “I was overseas at the time. My youngest daughter had to tell me what it meant.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBailey Smith is gutless, and he makes horrible comments about women and is irresponsible.”<\/p>\n

She went on: \u201cWhat 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMax Holmes got in touch immediately. He dressed up as me, and I didn\u2019t have a massive issue with that. He was deeply embarrassed and apologetic,” she revealed.<\/p>\n

Skynews.com.au has reached out to the Geelong Cats for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caroline Wilson has unleashed on Bailey Smith five months after his offensive social media post during the AFL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,262431,63,55,639,12928,13659,115280,12137,85],"class_list":["post-528023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-aus-sport","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-caroline-wilson","tag-geelong-cats","tag-mad-monday","tag-max-holmes","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528023","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=528023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}