No more ‘oh Bailey’: The schoolboy treatment that lets Smith escape accountability

If you thought Geelong had a Bailey Smith problem, you were wrong. It’s you who has a Bailey Smith problem. My goodness, did you not see the way he played this year?

He was an outrageous success. Not perfect mind you, but so, so close. Just a nudge here and there and voila, perfect. Nothing to fret about at all.

And his coach Chris Scott is right: Bailey Smith the football player was an outrageous success on the field for much of the year (let’s not look too closely at his grand final).

But Geelong didn’t just recruit a footballer, they recruited a brand. And Brand Bailey Smith has done damage to Brand Geelong. Though it has done wonders for Brand Bailey Smith.

Scott prefers to coach the footballer and ignore the brand. He worries about what players do for him on the field and leaves it to others to worry about what they do outside the boundary line. He’s a coach so to an extent that’s right. But he’s also a club leader so to that extent, he needs a bigger picture.

Smith’s post-season Mad Monday behaviour with his social media posts should concern Scott. A team represents a club and makes the club something people want to be a part of. Winning is only part of it.

Scott at his press conference on Wednesday upon being announced as coach of Victoria for next year’s return of State of Origin skirted the nub of the issue with Smith and what he actually thought of what Smith had said and done, and how it reflected on the club and the culture of the team.

He was not explicitly asked mind you - the question was couched in terms of the latest AFL warning to Geelong and Smith about his behaviour - but this was Scott’s first comments since the lamentable post-season and a moment for him to volunteer his thoughts and perhaps some contrition. There was no sense of that but there was a tone of minimising what had occurred.

Scott said that much of what had happened with Smith passed him by because he keeps himself away from social media. Implicitly, if you are someone who consumes social media, well, what did you expect, diving into the cesspit?

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Scott reckoned the social media posts were, like many other occasions when people find themselves in trouble, jokes that fell flat.

Let’s be clear what the joke was here: Smith, photographed with teammate Max Holmes dressed as my colleague Caroline Wilson on Mad Monday, and posted the picture with an emoji representing semen, with the line that she had never looked so good. Quite the gag. ROFL.

It’s doubtful that had Holmes dressed as Scott’s wife, posed with Smith, and Smith posted the same image the coach would have been quite so sanguine about it being a bad joke.

A schoolboy and his mates at the back of the class would find it funny. The teacher and principal, on the other hand, would variously call it bullying, misogynistic, and a breach of social media, but above all, a breach of decency. And not funny.

Scott most likely hated the post and Mad Monday carry on (he admitted to being pleased that a silver lining was the club abandoned their annual dress-up).

As is Scott’s preference, he didn’t want to buy into a public discussion of it.

But private discussions appear to have had little change in public behaviour from Nose Beers Smith (his “nose beers” line earlier this year was another example of a Smith joke that fell flat).

Geelong have long insisted with a whiff of condescension that they are unlike other clubs because they treat their players like adults and do not punish them like schoolboys. But what happens when the players act like schoolboys?

Adults posting as Smith did on social media – adults, for instance, working in administration at Geelong and not playing football for them – would breach every workplace HR rule and social media policy, and would be on written warnings or sacked. That’s how adults are treated.

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Instead, Smith got an “oh Bailey” roll of the eyes, like he was a naughty schoolboy. Again.

Frank conversations were held with Smith and with the AFL, and Scott said it was right that those were not public but also understood why the public and media would extrapolate about what had gone on. But he was comfortable with where it was all sat with Smith.

“The point I would make, when I’ve spoken to Bailey, is we think while it’s imperfect at the moment, it’s in a pretty good spot. I wouldn’t fret too much,” Scott said.

Hear that, Caro? Don’t fret.

Smith’s Mad Monday postings came only weeks after he singled out, berated and abused a female photographer at a Geelong training session that she and the rest of the media had been invited to attend. That was no joke.

Smith apologised. By text.

Perhaps the Gen Xers and Millennials at the AFL were unaware of the meaning among Gen Zers of the water splash emoji when they offered Smith a shrug of the shoulders for his behaviour and shuffled it back to Geelong to deal with?

Smith, far from castigated, doubled down by finding an old Footy Show clip of a Sam Newman tirade against Wilson and posted it before quickly deleting it.

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