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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Sport
Jonathan Horn

From the Pocket: Ross Lyon gives an unvarnished view of AFL reality but too often punches down

Saints coach Ross Lyon with players on the field after beating Port Adelaide
When so much of what we hear from AFL coaches is carefully workshopped, St Kilda coach Ross Lyon often offers a dose of reality. Photograph: Matt Turner/AAP

Ross Lyon’s press conferences are typically a mix of battery and flattery. On any given day, you’ll get smart-arsery, hostility, humility, occasional mirth and genuine insight. Sometimes, he will provide a 10-minute explanation of how the game was won or lost. Sometimes, he’s playful and rhetorical. Sometimes, he’ll cock his head and look at the questioner like they have no business even being in the same room as him.

The St Kilda coach has been criticised for the way he responded to a set of perfectly reasonable questions in Adelaide last weekend. “Do you have a sense of where you’re at in the context of the season?” was one of them. He didn’t exactly react like Bob Hawke to Richard Carleton’s “impertinence” in 1983. But it was a typical Lyon response – part superciliousness, part drollery, part deflection. It was nothing, really. The journalist handled it well, and the coach didn’t cross the line.

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