Cornes: Umpires have agenda against Greene

Port Adelaide great Kane Cornes believes the umpires need to apologise to GWS star Toby Greene for the way they treated him in Friday night’s AFL clash with Collingwood.

Cornes was disgusted by some of the free kicks Greene missed out as well as some of the free kicks paid against him in the Giants’ two-point win over the Magpies.

Greene’s 148-game career has been littered with suspensions and fines for poor on-field discipline, and Cornes feels the umpires have an agenda against him because of it.

The umpires penalised Greene three times against Collingwood and didn’t give him a single free kick despite one clear incident in which he was tackled around the neck.

(Photo by Mark Metcalfe/AFL Photos/via Getty Images)

“He almost needs an apology, Toby Greene, for the way that he was umpired on Friday night,” Cornes told AFL Media’s The Round So Far.

“It’s almost like the umpires have a set agenda against him.

“When they come into the game that Toby Greene is playing in, they umpire him differently to the rest of the players in the competition.

“It’s not good enough.

“They (the umpires) have got to come out and address those decisions that they paid that weren’t there and the ones that he didn’t get and say, ‘Look that was our mistake. Toby’s got a reputation, we’ve got to start umpiring him fairly like we umpire everyone else’.”

Greene was suspended for last year’s preliminary final win over Collingwood after being handed a one-match ban for making unnecessary contact to the eye region of Brisbane’s Lachie Neale.

Cornes believed that suspension was largely based on Greene’s reputation.

“The suspension was not fair… it was an absolute joke, there was a witch hunt,” Cornes said.

“Umpires are umpiring Toby Greene differently to anyone else and that is not fair.

“They need to acknowledge it and they need to apologise for the way he was umpired on Friday “