Brock McLame

There’s no doubt that Jesse Stringer’s recent effort has rocked us off our moral high horse down at KP, but surely Carlton’s Brock McLean takes the AFL knob-jockey award for his social media antics this week. For the uninformed, McLean tweeted “Today can f*ck right off”, to which one of his followers responded (with great humour) “Did you finally get delisted?”. McLean responded with “No, your mum has given me aids.” Nice touch. Not.

The club subsequently acted upon Brock’s no-brain effort, slapping him with a suspended one-match ban and a $5000 fine. In a statement McLean said, ”I realised soon after that my comments were not suitable and took it down and I sincerely apologise for offending anyone who read the tweet in the short time it was up. The discussions with the club this morning were an important reminder of the possible ramifications of comments in social media and of remembering the added responsibilities that come with being a player with the Carlton Football Club.”

And the club said, “From a club point of view, we work with our players and encourage them to be on social media to engage with our supporters and we do work with them about what they should and shouldn’t say. We are certainly disappointed with the tweets, knowing (Twitter) is in the public domain. While it is really disappointing that people use social media to have a cowardly go at players, it’s no excuse for using that language. Brock took it down almost immediately of his own accord and it’s important to note that.”

Was the club really serious by saying they were disappointed about people using social media to have a go at players? Please. Given three of their own players were recently fined for using social media to criticise umpires’ performances, that’s all a bit rich. And whilst it was admirable of Brock to take the offending tweet down, if you spend a minute reading through his Twitter feed you’ll see he hasn’t removed the original tweet (“Today can f*ck right off” is still there). And there’s a litany of posts that use, in the club’s very own words, “that language”. For example, “hey brock I have a dirty a*$#hole , can I get a RT”, upon which McLean replies, “Get it bleached mate, worked wonders for mine!!” All class.

The whole saga begs the question: if this is the piecemeal way Carlton handles this sort of indiscretion, is it any wonder the Blues haven’t reached the heights many expected this year?  And it’s time we ask: is Judd really a great leader, or simply a great player? After all, his legacy – which is the ultimate mark of a great leader – at West Coast was hardly a stable one. And all the signs coming from Princess Park indicate that the club is seriously lacking sound judgement and leadership at a fundamental level. So, is Carlton’s crap performance this year reflective of poor coaching, luck, administration, culture or leadership? Or is it all of the above?

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