Luke Beveridge‘s furious tirade against Fox Footy’s Tom Morris is a by-product of the stress AFL coaches are under, according to Ross Lyon.
Beveridge has come under fire for launching at Morris following his side’s season-opening loss to Melbourne on Wednesday.
The 51-year-old Bulldogs coach took offence to a question asked by Morris after one of his stories had leaked Beveridge’s team selection for the grand final rematch.
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Lyon, who coached St Kilda and Fremantle between 2007 and 2019, suggested the exchange between Beveridge and Morris revealed an underlying problem in the AFL.
“It points to the stress on AFL coaches,” Lyon told Wide World of Sports.
“There’s always behaviour and consequences, but there’s the antecedent. You’ve got to look at what’s going on with Luke, he might be dealing with a lot we don’t know about. What’s going on underneath? Is everything alright at home? Is his health alright? We don’t know, but we just assume he’s a coach and he’s okay.
“Not that it justifies (a tirade), but it can help explain behaviour. Often there’s something underneath. Your kid at school, it could be they’re getting bullied, there’s often something underlying.
“For example, with players, they’re off, but (you find out) it’s a gambling problem or a relationship problem. I think there’s got to be something that Luke is dealing with that caused him to not be at his best. It just doesn’t quite add up.”
Lyon’s assertion that something deeper was at play echoed a sentiment from SEN’s Gerard Whateley.
“The fact that Beveridge is at tipping point makes me wonder what’s really at play and where his attentions and energies are consumed. It would, I think, be fertile ground for the club psychologist,” he said.
“Is it the breach of loyalty a leak represents? I would struggle with that, I’m happy to say that upfront. Is it the strains of a reduced football department, which Beveridge is long on record as resenting?
“Is it the Grand Final loss revisited in defeat last night? Whatever tipped Beveridge on the first night of the season doesn’t excuse what transpired.”
Despite being no stranger to challenging journalists, Lyon admitted he was taken aback by the 2016 premiership-winning coach’s outburst.
“Instinctively, I was like, ‘Woah’. It was a showstopper. I was surprised. They were beaten convincingly in a similar manner (to last year’s grand final), so I think he’d have disappointment,” he said.
“Luke was clearly emotional and agitated. There’s always two truths. There’s Tom Morris’ truth and there’s Luke Beveridge’s truth. They’ll always look at the same situation and see it differently through two different lenses.”
Lyon’s stunned reaction mirrored that of former Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley, who admitted Beveridge had “departed from the normal coach’s playbook”.
“I understand Bevo’s perspective … in a coach’s position, you want to control all the information in your football club,” Buckley told Fox Footy. “Often the coach will be agitated but he won’t share that.
“That’s abnormal. There’s going to be ramifications from that. Unfortunately this is a big story, it’s going to be replayed.
“He’s a dog at a bone, like Tom who got that information and shared it, because that’s his nature and his job. Bevo sees this as something he needs to address and he’s just put it out there.
“I’m not surprised he’s done that because I think he’s very passionate about his football club and he wants to stamp out the leaking information.
“That’s an emotional response and he’s created something that he’s now going to have to deal with.”
It is unclear where exactly the leak within the Bulldogs’ organisation lies, but Lyon pointed to one common area where leaks to media often occurred.
“My experience is that the leaks come from the players and player managers. If I had to say where it’s come from, I’d say it’s from a player manager and not a staff member,” he said.
“Often it’ll be a player that’s not even in the 22. That’s what I found out when we were at St Kilda and Freo, a young player often gets manipulated by a player manager and they’ll feed it in.
“I had talks at both clubs about being careful because your player manager is close to you and supportive, but they also feather their own nest in this manner – they trade information.
“You get feedback where it comes from. You’ve got 44 players on the list. Because you share everything and they talk, it’s usually player managers or families of players who speak to someone that’s in the media. It’s a small town and everyone wants to know.”
Lyon said it wasn’t uncommon for coaches to be fired up in a press conference, particularly after a loss as Beveridge had experienced, and said a club’s media manager had an important role to play in such circumstances.
“You’re hot (after a loss), that’s why the losing coach goes second,” he said.
“(Club media manager) Luke Morfesse was absolutely fantastic at Fremantle. It was all about demeanour, demeanour, demeanour to be honest. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it, which I used to get wrong a little bit.
“In a press conference, there were a lot of things you wanted to say for yourself, but because you’re representing your club, you would have to submit to the club’s needs and let go of your personal desire to flex.
“On this occasion, I think (Beveridge) has missed that balance. It’s weird that it was over a selection issue. Clearly there is a backstory with (Ryan) Gardiner last year, and as Luke said, they’ve got a leak in the club.
“The briefing pre (the press conference) with the media manager there, they didn’t get it right between them. There’s no doubt that there’d be some serious conversations with the president, CEO, and the footy operations manager in the loop.”
One of Lyon’s most infamous press conferences was the ‘You’re quite brilliant’ exchange with 3AW presenter Shane McInnes following Fremantle’s 2013 qualifying final win over Geelong.
“The context was that we were sent to play a final in Geelong that had never been done in 100 years, so I felt we were shafted,” he recalled.
“Geelong had won 48 out of 50 games or something at Geelong, we’d had a great performance and Geelong was a physical team.
“The question that someone who I’d never met before had come up with was about Dockers’ off-ball incidents.
“We’ve got a prelim final to go into and I felt that we were being set up to be investigated, that’s why I went off.”
While he was no stranger to a fiery press conference, Lyon stressed that the relationship between the AFL’s coaches and reporters was an important one.
“I would challenge and journos knew they had to be prepared,” he said.
“I always got told that they had to walk out with content, so the job is to give content. The press conferences are AFL-mandated and really we’re there to give content. It’s an important relationship, and I think you’ve got to pick your battles a little bit.
“We’re all good people, but you challenge behaviour. Luke and Tom are very clearly good people, but you’ve got to challenge Luke’s behaviour on this.
“There’s nothing wrong with putting your hand up and saying, ‘I got it a bit wrong there’, and moving on.”