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Maybe it is because Smith has been occasionally unreachable, but where the AFL is concerned he remains untouchable.
Just ask young Giants Toby McMullin and Cooper Hamilton who were suspended for two weeks after dressing up as the Twin Towers 12 months ago at the deeply disappointing GWS Wacky Wednesday. Their costumes were in dreadful taste, but compared with Smith? He basically implied that losing a grand final turns you into a gay man – the implication being that’s a bad thing.
On a personal note, I probably wouldn’t have had a major problem with Max Holmes dressing up as me, even though it would have been nice to have been given the heads-up as we had spoken during the previous week. After the event he has been in touch twice and did apologise if he had given offence.
But I did have a problem with Smith’s social media post and an emoji my daughter had to explain to me. Judging from comments which came my way from people across the industry – the majority being women – I wasn’t alone. This is not a case of professional outrage. How dare Smith get away with sending such an insulting and sexist message to aspiring females with strong opinions working in the media or elsewhere in the AFL.
It came after Smith swore at Alison Wynd at an open media day earlier in September and coach Scott was moved to apologise to an AFL media manager after a verbal stoush left her in tears. A stoush relating to a visually impaired reporter’s presence at the post match press conference after the qualifying final.
Scott is widely regarded as the best, or one of the best, coaches in the game. He showed his customary sportsmanship after the shattering grand final loss, but in that previous post-match he jumped at shadows with neither Mackie nor media boss Sarah Kalaja prepared to regulate him. It feels like football has not been much fun for him of late.
Bailey Smith interacted with a member of the crowd at the Adelaide Oval after Geelong’s round five win and copped a fine from the AFL.
Most disappointing where Holmes was concerned was that he felt the need to apologise to me on Smith’s behalf. Bailey Smith is a player who seems to have a habit of lurking in the shadows, leaving others to pick up the mess when he does the wrong thing.
“How does he get away with it?” journalists have asked on more than one occasion of the Cats this year. “It’s complicated,” say Cats bosses.
The game’s new football boss Greg Swann declared a new regime this week – a regime in which head office would leave clubs to handle missteps like Geelong’s Mad Monday. Apart from the sad fact that a significant number of women working in the football media feel let down by head office’s lack of action over Smith, Swann’s is not a bad strategy. Except that Smith’s lack of accountability is now damaging Geelong because they don’t know how to discipline him and cannot control him.
A player whose great form it wore as a cultural badge of honour this season after Smith’s fallout with the Bulldogs as the Cats kept winning and Smith kept starring.
The AFL, too, is deeply worried about Smith and at a loss as to how to move forward. It is extraordinary when you consider he publicly joked about celebrating post grand final with “nose beers”, prompted a home visit from Andrew Dillon – a fireside chat which proved fruitless in an off-field sense – swore at Wynd and has now highly offended the gay community and women in the media again and yet has only been punished by head office this year for twice raising his finger at crowds early in the season.
The Cats raised eyebrows in some circles and high praise in others last year when Tyson Stengle returned to the senior side less than a week after being rushed to hospital by ambulance after collapsing in a nightclub.
But Smith has challenged the Geelong way of “never complain, never explain”. It is clear the Cats have at times been forced to live a lie with Smith. All year we have been told how much his fellow players love having him around, how hard he trains and – true – how well he has played despite some occasional absences after a long absence following a knee reconstruction.
Yes, he has had a great season – All-Australian, runner-up in the Carji Greeves Medal and equal first in the AFL Coaches Award. But he has been an off-field liability on too many occasions this year and I don’t believe for one minute that he has won the unqualified affection and full support of his teammates. Geelong’s on-field leaders should be filthy with him this week.
The most telling red flag from this angle might seem innocuous in the context of the above, but it came on the night Smith won his All-Australian blazer and spoke about being institutionalised one year earlier. It was so commendable given his adored and influential status for him to normalise being in a “psych ward”.
But he had turned up in the wrong shoes and had to swap his sneakers for chief executive Hocking’s boots before he went on stage. Smith blamed his manager Robbie D’Orazio. He said untruthfully that D’Orazio was meant to supply his shoes that night. Chris Scott and Hocking just shook their heads.
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It is one thing for a player of Smith’s age and status to struggle to wear the correct shoes – quite another to blame his manager. It was a minor version of the micromanagement overseen by AFL and Western Bulldogs bosses and outside crisis managers after he was filmed using drugs back in 2022.
Maybe that’s how it is when you’re a young, turbulent and troubled athlete. Particularly when you’re talented enough. That’s when the people around you are happy to just keep picking up the pieces and along the way sacrifice small chunks of their own reputations. Until they’re not.
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