King slams AFL clubs for treating fans like ‘fools’

DAVID King has slammed AFL clubs for their lack of transparency when it comes to injured players and the way their status is communicated publicly.

Kings said supporters are being treated like fools for not being told the full story when injury reports are released from clubs, calling for the AFL to start introducing fining clubs that are exploiting this tactic.

The conversation is topical after Melbourne star Clayton Oliver was ruled out of his side’s recent clash against Geelong as a result of a hamstring injury.

King said clubs are massaging the truth when it comes to this in order to gain an advantage over the opposition.

“The clubs treat us like fools, that’s the bottom line,” King said on SEN’s Crunch Time.

“They treat us like fools with this injury list stuff, they want to massage the truth with all sorts of reporting, they don’t want to give up and extra information to opposition clubs which is ridiculous.

“At the end of the day, the fans pay the price for that.

“The Geelong injury list is just ridiculous, the short term, medium term and long term, it’s always been one to two weeks, three to four weeks and five plus.

“And then when something goes wrong, they say ‘you’ve got to trust us, you’ve got to believe us when we tell you this’, well we haven’t been able to believe you for the previous five years so why do we have to believe you today.

“I think the clubs are a victim of their own standards here, the reporting of injuries needs to be clarified and corrected in the severe manor by the AFL next season.

“The game has gone past this stuff, hiding players and massaging the truth, naming your 23 that you know is wrong, you know there’s two players going out.

“Let’s just be done with all that stuff, you’re treating the fans like fools. Come down on it hard and if you want to make a change to your team and run the fine line on a player playing or not playing, every change to your team should be a $5000 fine.

“If you want to do it every week, you’re going to spend $100,000.”

– HUGH FITZPATRICK