Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge has hit out at Fox Footy journalist Tom Morris in his post-match press conference.
Morris broke a story this week that Lachie Hunter was expected to miss tonight’s match. Hunter was named medical sub on the night and then brought into the starting 22 minutes before the game after Jason Johannisen hurt his leg during warm-up.
When Morris asked Beveridge about the player changes and whether that was a deliberate ploy, Beveridge questioned why Morris was at the press conference and went on the attack.
“You have the nerve to ask a question and to even be here?” Beveridge said.
“You’ve been preying on us the last two times [we played Melbourne]. You barrack for Melbourne, Tom Morris. You have been opening us up and causing turmoil within our football club by declaring our team before it needs to be declared.
“Is that the way Fox want you to operate? Is that the gutter journalist you want to be? Is that who you want to be?
“We had a plan. We had some late stuff with ‘JJ’ [Johannisen] that came out of warm-ups but everything else went to plan from Sunday, which somehow you found out about again. We need to put our hand up and say there is some leakage from our football club, but you are preying on it. Your conflict of interest here is considerable and yet your gutter journalism is killing us behind the scenes.
“This is why the health and wellbeing of the people is caught up in all this stuff.
“Are you proud of yourself?”
Morris responded “Fox backs me” and that he was proud of his work. Beveridge cut him off and said Morris wasn’t welcome at his press conferences, to which Morris responded that it was an AFL press conference that he was allowed to attend.
“Have you got enough, boys and girls?” Beveridge asked the journalists trying to end the press conference.
“I think we are probably done, aren’t we?”