AFL LEGEND Leigh Matthews has panned elements of this year's AFL's All Australian awards, which were handed out in Melbourne earlier in the week.

Speaking on AFL.com.au's Access All Areas on Friday, Matthews said he was uncomfortable with aspects of the award, particularly with the selectors having to explain at the function and on TV who was in the team and why.

"If you're justifying why someone's in, you're virtually denigrating why someone's not in," Matthews said.

"I just thought the whole thing was in bad taste.

"I hated it."

The four-time premiership coach was also most critical of the use of statistics to justify team selections.

"This crap about stats … why don't we just let a computer pick it?" Matthews said.

"If we want to worry about stats to make a judgment, let the computer do it.

"It's got to be more [than] about stats. You have to have people make a judgment."

Matthews said he wouldn't have selected West Coast's Dean Cox as a second ruckman in the forward pocket. Instead, he would have picked North Melbourne's Drew Petrie.

"He's the best of the true forwards who can go into the ruck," he said.

Matthews was initially slated to be a selector of this year's team, but time commitments forced him to resign his position in the middle of the year. Gerard Healy took his place.

AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou, the non-voting chairman of the selection panel, refused to be drawn on Matthews' remarks.
 
"Leigh is entitled to his opinion," he said.

Also on Access All Areas, Matthews said he had no inkling that Gavin Crosisca, one of his premiership players at Collingwood in 1990, battled a drug problem for most of his career.

"The Saturday night drinking was something that everyone did in the era but I had no idea that he was taking drugs. It came as a complete surprise to everyone at Collingwood," he said.

Matthews, together with former Richmond champion Matthew Richardson also discuss the key match-ups in this weekend's preliminary finals and whether the emotional toll on the Magpies, as they continue to deal with the death of former teammate John McCarthy, will be a help or a hindrance against the Sydney Swans.