Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\nDuring a scuffle. Lynch manhandled Roberts and turned him around.<\/p>\n
He then pointed at the No21 on the back of the Essendon player\u2019s shirt, appearing to infer he did not know who Roberts was.<\/p>\n
The savage act was caught on the live broadcast \u2014 with fans quick to react to the moment online.<\/p>\n
One said: \u201cThat is wild work from Tom Lynch.\u201d<\/p>\n
While another added: \u201cTom Lynch making Archie Roberts turn around and show his number is genuine cinema.\u201d<\/p>\n
A third replied: \u201cThat\u2019s why he\u2019s the GOAT.\u201d<\/p>\n
And a fourth reacted: \u201cTop tier s***housery.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richmond have somewhat recovered from seven defeats in a row at the start of the 2026 season, winning two of their last four to move off the bottom of the AFL ladder.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Essendon remain rock bottom after just one win from their 11 matches.<\/p>\n
They are also on a run of six successive losses \u2014 with Friday evening the first of those in which they have conceded fewer than 100 points.<\/p>\n
![\"Behind](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a0cd603c7991ccdd8d59e628127db8e4.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
After the game, Essendon coach Brad Scott said: \u201cIt\u2019s probably hard to separate the performance from the circumstances.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in terms of the game, we were on the hop the whole time, given that right from the start, we had to shuffle the deck chairs a fair bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to add: \u201cI mean, it\u2019s obviously extremely disappointing not to get it done, but there are always things that you think, okay, there\u2019s positives, but it\u2019s hard to talk about positives at the moment for us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in a situation that we don\u2019t want to be in, and we\u2019ve got to keep fighting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, overall, and I know at the end of the day, no one cares, but given the circumstances, the players fought to the end and gave themselves a chance to win and fell just short.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally published as Brutal AFL sledging labelled \u2018genuine cinema\u2019 in Richmond win over Essendon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richmond star Tom Lynch has gone viral on social media after some brutal sledging towards Essendon\u2019s Archie Roberts.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-688593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688593","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=688593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}