“I know Mr Maxwell found a Collingwood premiership well worth celebrating, but we have to consider the safety of his fellow players. Video footage shows clearly that he raised his arms, pumped his fists and ran around hugging teammates BEFORE the siren sounded. He could have caused an injury to a St Kilda player still running hard for the ball.
“Now we’ve had the protest ... err, review, the stewards’ ... err, match review panel is obliged to charge him with premature celebration, just as I did all those times with Glen Boss on Makybe Diva.
“Considering this is Mr Maxwell’s first offence, and despite the grand final being the equivalent of a Melbourne Cup, I suggest we prescribe a penalty in the order of a $1000 fine.
“Either he accepts it, or takes his chances of dodging a more severe penalty if he refers the matter to the tribunal.”
We know how Collingwood five-footers (the jockeys) who transgressed felt the wrath of Gleeson between 1996 and 2008 when he was Racing Victoria's chief steward/director of integrity services, and now it is the turn of the Collingwood (and other club) six-footers.
And won’t the cartoonists have fun with the new appointee, a Western Bulldogs tragic, sitting on the AFL match review panel, his pork pie hat the focus of their drawings.
Gleeson, of course, was never seen at work on track without the hat, a marketing opportunity racing grasped by promoting and selling the “Gleeson” at city tracks - a hat in the style Des wore. In several colours, too.
Perhaps they’ll have Gleeson tossing aside the pork pie for an old wide-brimmed hat like the goal umpires used to wear before they put on the peaked baseball caps. Clearly, the new ones are not Gleeson’s go.
And Mark Knight and co. could go overboard by having Gleeson to help decide whether the Western Bulldogs could be charged over their recent “worm” behaviour in their Hong Kong Island “night game” at Long Kwai Fong.
You know the type of thing ...
“No, it’s not a case of boys will be boys - I’ve seen the footage. Collectively, those young men have brought our great game into disrepute and they should pay the appropriate penalty.
“Is that the protest siren? Oh, no, it’s my mobile - must be David Smorgon.”
(Gleeson, now 63, retired as a stipendiary steward with Racing Victoria in July 2008. His successor, Terry Bailey, does not wear the hat.)
Stephen Howell is the editor of Inside Racing. He, too, barracks for the Bulldogs ... but not as passionately as he did for Makybe Diva.
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs
