Port Adelaide president David Koch has blasted the AFL over the Sam Powell-Pepper investigation, saying the player was railroaded.
Power chief executive Keith Thomas will hold a media conference on Thursday to expand on the club’s concerns about the league’s investigation.
Powell-Pepper has already sat out two games during the AFL’s investigation into his drunken nightclub incident.
On Wednesday the league announced he would be suspended for three games, meaning he misses one more match.
The AFL said in a statement Powell-Pepper “engaged in inappropriate behaviour that is unbecoming for an AFL player by being intoxicated in a public place and by making inappropriate contact with a female”.
Koch said Port are angry about the investigation, accusing the head of the AFL integrity unit of not looking at all video relating to the incident.
“The whole respect and responsibility policy leaves the clubs in the dark. They take complete control. I issued them a grievance notice before they would start talking sense,” Koch said in a statement to Triple M.
“My biggest issue was they are railroading a kid and trying to re-build their reputation with women because of the misdemeanours of their own former executives.
“In Sam Powell-Pepper’s case, a woman anonymously made these claims, did not press charges with police — which we were happy for her to do. We have vision of the entire night and the head of the integrity unit refused to see it.
“I’m putting it on the agenda at the next presidents’ meeting.”
Last year, senior AFL executives Simon Lethlean and Richard Simkiss resigned because of affairs with junior colleagues.
Collingwood president Eddie McGuire said there is a broader issue of growing discontent among the club about how the AFL treats them.
“The clubs are getting sick of getting treated like franchises,” McGuire told Triple M.
“The AFL Commission was brought into place to act on behalf of clubs.
“There’s a very strong feeling that the clubs are there as a necessary impediment to the AFL hierarchy – that’s not Gil McLachlan, that’s the levels underneath (him).
“It has (been) building for a long time … the pendulum swings too far and the pendulum has to come back.”
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