‘Really bizarre‘: Swans icon spills beans on ‘ugly’ AFL swipe

Swans Coach Paul Roos shakes hands with AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou. Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images.

Sydney premiership coach Paul Roos says his players believed umpires were influenced by Andew Demetriou’s “ugly” football comments during the 2005 season.

Demetriou said during the 2005 season that Sydney, who were the eventual premiers, played unattractive football which some media pundits had described as “ugly”.

Roos says he was surprised that no one from AFL House came out to hold the former AFL chief executive “accountable” following his remarkable anti-Swans comments.

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Speaking on the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast, Roos said the Swans were in disbelief that an AFL figure would make such claims about their club publicly.

“It just seemed like a really bizarre comment. We were the only team at the time in Sydney,” Roos said on Sacked.

“I was really surprised that no one held him accountable from the AFL. My first response is ‘can you imagine the CEO of Coca Cola saying, don’t drink Coca Cola in New South Wales. Drink Pepsi?’

“And I remember being on one of the big sports shows not long after he said it and legitimately the host said, ‘Roosy, what does he 파워볼사이트 mean by ugly footy? Because it’s a rugby league town, it’s a physical town, it’s a town that likes toughness.’”

“Did we use it at times (as motivation)? Yeah, we did. And did we feel like the AFL was against us? Probably at times we did, yeah, there’s no question about that. It was just a really bizarre thing for the AFL CEO to say.

“We just knew we were out of form. We knew what we were capable of. But yeah, it was a bit of a weird time.”

Roos said the club felt that the way it was umpired changed in the aftermath of Demetriou’s comments.

“We generally felt the way we played impacted the umpires,” Roos said.

“And that comment, that was probably one part of it. We did feel there were times when we were umpired differently. It was interesting. We had (an assistant) coach who came in 2006 or 2007 after we had won the premiership and he made an interesting comment doing the review and he said, ‘Guys, it’s funny. Now that I am here, I actually realise that you are umpired differently.’

“I don’t think it was intentional. This is not a criticism of the umpires, but umpires are human. You know, we want the ball moving. We want goals.

“The players because they are on the ground, they know when a free kick is paid and not paid, and I am not suggesting it was intentional but that was the feeling the players got.”

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