Hawthorn legend Dermott Brereton has leapt to the defence of North Melbourne champion Wayne Carey, after he was snubbed by the Roos last week.
Carey was not included in the Kangaroos promotional video that was released on Friday, showcasing their 100-year anniversary in the V/AFL.
While former teammates Corey McKernan slammed North Melbourne’s call to leave out the 244-game legend, it’s now a former rival who has also spoken up.
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“If you are trying to get your very best players that were representative of your team as players, Wayne Carey sits top of the list and I would have thought there would be a place for him in that video,” Brereton said on SEN Radio on Monday.
Carey featured for a split second in the video amongst 1999 premiership celebrations, despite captaining the club to that flag and another years earlier in 1996
But Brereton also acknowledged why North Melbourne may have chosen to play it safe with the video.
“But the club has a decision to make. ‘Do we put that piece of footage of Wayne in there and we know we will have to defend our actions in doing so?’,” he said.
“And that’s the battle that they have moving forward and they’ve made a stance that, no, they don’t want to defend their actions of putting his profile there in that commercial.”
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Brereton was torn with North Melbourne’s decision.
“He’s made some really bad decisions in the past and he has confessed and copped up to some of them,” Brereton said.
“He’s a good guy and he makes so many people around him happy … He’s fantastic, he’s a pretty good citizen who has made some bad errors.”
The controversial AFL figure left the Roos in after an affair with teammates Anthony Stevens’ wife hit the spotlight in early 2002.
Earlier this year, he was one of the inaugural inductees into the NSW Australian Football Hall of Fame, which fell on the same week as the AFL shining a light on gender-based violence.
The 53-year-old has an assault conviction and has previous allegations of domestic violence.
After conversations with AFL CEO Andrew Dillon, Carey opted not to attend the NSW Hall of Fame event.