Richmond young gun Sydney Stack is under fire after social media footage emerged of the 21-year-old backflipping off a cliff just a month out from the AFL season.
Stack’s teammate Tom Lynch posted the video to Instagram, showing Stack backflipping off a seven metre high cliff in Blairgowrie on the Mornington Peninsula.
The Tigers play the opening match of the AFL season on March 17.
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“I thought, that could not be Sydney Stack 33 days out from round one when his career is on a knife’s edge,” Port Adelaide great Kane Cornes told SEN Breakfast.
“What is the benefit other than a couple of Instagram likes?”
When challenged that the backflip was possibly something Stack had done many times before and presented little danger, Cornes refused to back down.
“He looks like he is an expert at doing backflips off cliffs,” he said.
“I wish he was an expert at playing football.
“In 2020 he breached protocols and the club was fined $100,000, last year he was arrested and fined $6000 for breaching quarantine.
“This is a guy who is that talented. It’s going to be a travesty if he doesn’t play for 12 years and 200 games.
“What’s he thinking?”
Cornes, who won a premiership with Port Adelaide in 2004, was also critical of Lynch for his role in the drama.
“Furthermore to that, what’s Tom Lynch doing filming this?,” Cornes added.
“The next day I pick up the paper and I read a story that Tom Lynch wants to be captain of Richmond. If he wants to be captain of Richmond, he says to Stack, ‘Hey Sydney, back off the cliff, we don’t need you jumping and breaking your neck or breaking a leg’.
“He wants to be the captain, Tom Lynch? He films it and posts it to Instagram.
“This is a guy whose career is on life support and I see him doing backflips from seven or eight metres up into what appears to be shallow water.
“Jumping of a cliff and doing a backflip into shallow water is a risk I wouldn’t be taking if my career was on life support 33 days out from round one.”
Stack, who signed a one-year contract extension in October, has played 33 matches for the Tigers. He spent three weeks in prison at the end of 2020 after breaching Western Australia’s quarantine laws.
It’s not the first time Cornes has questioned Stack’s “ridiculous” use of social media. In December he criticised the 21-year-old’s “cringeworthy, embarrassing” TikTok videos.
“I’m so shocked by it,” Cornes said.
“I’m not for one minute comparing the seriousness of getting arrested and being locked up to jumping off a cliff, but when you weigh up the whole package and that he’s very lucky to get a one-year contract extension at Richmond and he’s very lucky to still be on an AFL list considering what he’s put that club through.”
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