Eddie McGuire’s brazen swipe at athletics after conflict of interest claims

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire has taken a brazen swipe at athletics, claiming interest in the sport reached an “all-time low” due to industry-wide “systematic drug cheating” and overall poor governance.

After McGuire was accused of being “hopelessly conflicted” by Geelong president Colin Carter last week over his Jack Steven comments, Olympian and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Tamsyn Manou (nee Lewis) pointed out McGuire was a member of the Athletics Australia board, which runs Athletics Victoria, when the sport was relocated from Olympic Park (where Collingwood trains) to Lakeside Oval in Albert Park.

“I don’t like to call Eddie out because obviously he’s very powerful in the sporting world, but tongue in cheek I would say I think a bigger conflict of interest (than Carter’s) would be us losing Olympic Park,” Manou told the Herald Sun.

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“That was a huge conflict for people who were on the Athletics Australia board at the time that were very heavily involved at Collingwood.

“And you know what, well done to them because they got what they wanted, but we were stupid in track and field and didn’t stand our ground and fight harder to hold onto that track.”

Speaking on Triple M’s Hot Breakfast on Wednesday morning, McGuire didn’t necessarily hit back at Manou, saying he was a “big fan” of her attitude when she was competing.

But McGuire turned the blowtorch on the sport of athletics as a whole, saying interest in the sport reached “an all-time low” due to performance enhancing-drugs issues and poor governance.

“Tamsyn Manou had a crack yesterday – fair dinkum,” McGuire told Triple M’s Hot Breakfast.

“Yes, the demise of athletics as a sport is because they’re not at Olympic Park anymore. Nothing to do with systematic drug cheating throughout the whole industry over the last 25 years or the fact that their governing officers, the IOC, most of them are in jail over the last period of time. Nothing to do with any of that.

“I feel for Tamsyn though … she ran in the semi-finals so often and just did such a great job. The great thing about Tamsyn is that she just turned up in Australia and ran all the time … unlike a lot of her compatriots who didn’t turn up for the Australian summers and ran, literally and figuratively, the competition and the interest in the sport into an all-time low.”

Manou said her sport’s new facility was “soulless compared to Olympic Park”, addint it was tough for athletes to compete well due to the conditions.

McGuire further explained some of the reasoning behind the move to the $70 million purpose-built Albert Park facility.

“They were losing a million dollars at Olympic Park and it was falling down. And, I’ll tell you exactly what happened, Lachlan Murdoch walked in to Steve Bracks’ office, the Premier of Victoria, and hit the table and said: ‘Build me a stadium for my rugby league team and for rugby league, as you’ve promised, or else it’s on.’ And at that moment, the premier of Victoria rang me up and said: ‘You know how you’re pretty happy down there with your oval that you built next to the athletics track? Well we made it back.’ And that’s where it started from,” McGuire said.

“I had a contract that said Collingwood’s ground could be no further from where that was, so it was either going to be built across the road at the Tennis Centre or on the athletics track. Athletics was going to be shunted out to Doncaster or even to Aberfeldie where there’s two tracks – and we fought really hard and got a fantastic facility with the VIS down there at Albert Park … it was a pretty good deal from a very low base.

“If people want to say I’ve played a major role in facilitating the best sports entertainment precinct probably in the world – and a second one down there in Albert Park – I’ll cop it.”