Eddie McGuire, who to some is a hero and to others the anti-Christ, consistently defends his ability to be a media performer and the President of the largest football club in Australia. Once again however, he will be defending his role, after his latest faux pas.
On Monday morning on his breakfast radio program, he was the recipient of a call from a member of the public who claimed to have seen Melbourne Demons vice-captain Brent Moloney out at a pub late at night.
While this isn’t a huge sin, the caller later claimed that Moloney relieved himself on the bar in front of patrons.
This allegation set off the media and pushed the Demons into panic mode. Moloney after investigation was dropped as vice-captain for being out late at night, but tellingly the club claimed there was no proof of the caller’s allegations.
This was backed up by the pub and by police.
While we can debate in another article whether Moloney should have been out, the big question is again the conflict of interest McGuire had with this incident.
McGuire, who would have known how big a story this was, took a call from a person who at 2:30am was in a pub, and claimed to have Moloney behaving badly. Unless this person was a teetotaller I highly doubt they would have been in a state of mind to see who was doing what.
Already you can see the unreliability, yet McGuire put the man on radio. As both a club president and a journalist he should have checked his facts. His eagerness for a story sullied the reputation of a man who made a poor choice and a club trying to rebuild.
But more importantly this raises the conflict of interest question that continues to dog McGuire. If a Collingwood player had been caught in the same incident, would McGuire have let the person speak?
If you were stupid enough to phone in McGuire’s show, you would probably just get an earful.
At worst McGuire was enjoying the downfall of another side, and at best he was reckless in his judgement.
The AFL and Melbourne FC need to have a quiet word with him. His sniping against opposition clubs has become more prevalent this year and needs to be curtailed.
This incident has destroyed a player’s reputation and will only work against Eddie as he tries to prove he can wear two hats.
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