AFL figure quits after TV star’s comments

Three members of the club’s recruiting department have quit, as “disturbing” reports emerged of disharmony between the players and coach David Noble.A 47-point loss to Melbourne on Saturday night leaves the Kangaroos languishing in 17th with just one win from 10 games in 2022 and the club is in crisis. It’s tried to downplay the significance of list boss Glenn Luff, national recruiting manager Mark Finnigan and national recruiting officer Ben Birthisel all walking out the door but angry fans are demanding answers.Watch every blockbuster AFL match this weekend Live & Ad-Break Free In-Play on Kayo. New to Kayo? Try 14-Days Free Now >On Monday, Port Adelaide great turned footy pundit Kane Cornes argued some of the blame for North Melbourne’s dire run had to be placed on the people in charge of recruitment.“I’ve got some sympathy for David Noble because I don’t think he’s got the list that he needs,” Cornes told Footy Classified. “This isn’t a coaching issue; this is a list issue.“I’d love to ask the question: what’s one positive list management move they have made in the last three years?“Their list manager is from Champion Data, he spent 20 years there, Glenn Luff, so I would think that’s an element that they saw as a strength of his.”Caroline Wilson and Eddie McGuire told Footy Classified on Wednesday night Luff resigned because Cornes’ comments were the “final straw”.“My understanding is that Glenn Luff has resigned as a direct result of what happened on Footy Classified on Monday night, which speaks to the disenchantment and paranoia at North Melbourne at the moment,” Wilson said.“Glenn Luff apparently has said to friends that this was the final straw for him. He believes that the comments about him might’ve been leaked … he might’ve been targeted by others at the club. Maybe the CEO, maybe one of the coaches, I’m not sure.“Who leaves a football club on the basis of one negative comment if everything’s fine at the football club? Clearly, Glenn Luff feels that someone at the club is out to get him. That’s a bad scene.”McGuire spoke to Luff about his exit and added: “He did mention to me that there had been a build-up and that Kane’s comments were the tipping point for him.“The simple fact is: Kane is entitled to sit there and say exactly what he said and name whoever because that’s what comes with the job. But also people are entitled to say this is too much for me, and if you’re not right for that for a million reasons, it’s time to go. It’s hot in the kitchen.”‘I find it hysterical’: Cornes respondsCornes responded to Wilson and McGuire’s reporting on his SEN SA radio show on Thursday morning — denying anyone at the Kangaroos had backgrounded him about Luff or leaked information.“There’s not a leak to me,” the Port Adelaide champion said.“Now, if you’re the list manager of a football club and you make that many errors on your list and players that you bring in like (Jaidyn) Stephenson and like (Atu) Bosenavulagi and like Callum Coleman-Jones are not getting a game for the 17th-ranked side in the competition, then we start to have questions.“If you’re a list manager and you want to be anonymous, you’re in the wrong game. So if Glenn Luff has walked away because of one reasonably benign comment – and it certainly wasn’t a hit job and it certainly wasn’t any inside information, as I said, the information is widely available in the Season Guide, that’s where I got it from.“I’m not going to back away from mentioning Glenn Luff – why is he untouchable?“I find it hysterical that someone has left their job because of one relatively … in terms of a hard criticism, that wasn’t on the upper echelon, and he’s quit because of that. It’s bizarre.”‘We are broken’: Kangaroos legends weigh inKangaroos legend David King weighed in on Wednesday, telling Fox Footy Cornes’ comments were “grossly unfair”.“Glenn Luff — really unfair I thought on Monday night for Kane to single him out,” King said. “He’s been there for three drafts and one of the drafts he got there four days before the draft, so you can’t really count that.“To put his name to that I thought was grossly unfair. Not one list decision is made by one person.”Kangaroos CEO Ben Amarfio tried to quell the angst in a recorded member Q&A on Wednesday, where he suggested the storm surrounding his club was driven by the media.“It’s never great to be in the media for the wrong reasons and there’s a lot of gossip that’s being peddled, a lot of innuendo that gets peddled, which is disappointing,” Amarfio said.“We know where we’re at inside the club. We’re united, we’re tight. The players are happy, the staff’s happy. The board is united behind us and we’re backing management, we’re backing our coach.“So that (innuendo) is really disappointing and that affects us all but as a team, we’re sticking together and we’ve got our eyes firmly set on the long term.”However, not everyone was buying the spin. AFL 360 co-host mark Robinson told Fox Footy it was “nonsense”, adding: “Don’t say it’s a media beat up when three people walk from your club in the one department. We’re not idiots!“Sometimes I think clubs try to treat fans like idiots … tell us the truth.”North Melbourne champion Wayne Carey believes his former club is “broken”.“This is as low as this football club has been since I’ve known it,” Carey told Triple M.“I don’t think they are being completely honest with themselves because you can’t improve until you actually acknowledge that we are broken.“There is too much going on. You don’t have people just resigning for no reason.” Via news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site https://www.news.com.au