Craig Hutchison explains mystery behind deleted AFL Trade Radio interview with Mark Robinson

SEN chief executive Craig Hutchison is adamant neither he nor the AFL was behind the decision to delete the podcast of a Mark Robinson interview on Trade Radio last Thursday.

The footy world went into a spin last week when audio from the opinionated former Herald Sun chief footy writer’s chat with Tom Morris and James Hird was posted on AFL.com.au before being taken down.

Robinson, who has scarcely been seen or heard from since leaving the Herald Sun and being sacked from Fox Footy last year, offered strong opinions in a wide-ranging interview that included a scathing assessment of Bailey Smith’s Mad Monday antics, and the AFL’s lack of response to it.

The segment did appear briefly online after it aired, but was quite conspicuously deleted shortly after.

Trade Radio is housed on the AFL.com.au platform, but is owned and run by SEN, whose boss says he had nothing to do with removal of the podcast.

“There was certainly no directive not to post the podcast,” Hutchison told The Sounding Board on Monday.

“That was an editorial judgement I think from one of the team, and then it was interpreted as censorship.

“The AFL didn’t know, they didn’t ask for anything (from the) podcast to be removed, and nor did I. It was just merely that was the circumstance of the day.

“The first I knew about it was when I read it in the paper on the way home from Shepparton. I’d been speaking at a lunch for two hours, I get in the car, look at the dot com of the Herald Sun, and there’s ‘censorship row’. But I can assure you, there was nothing from the AFL, or from me for that matter, on the podcast.”

Hutchison insists he didn’t even know Robinson had been invited on for a chat.

“It was a peculiar day to be fair,” he said.

“I was on the way to Shepparton for our SEN Goulburn Valley launch at lunchtime, and so I’m in and out of range a bit in the car in the morning.

“I hadn’t heard the interview or known that Mark was on, and I got alerted by one of our digital staff that Mark had indeed been on and had said some things that were right off-script from what the interview was intended to be, and (was asked) how best to handle that.

“I offered a view that it wasn’t, I didn’t think, in our best interests to be writing a story on SEN.com.au about whatever the tone of the interview was. I hadn’t heard it, didn’t know what he’d said.

“But I said I don’t think there’s any point at this stage amplifying the content any further on our platform, because it’s quite a unique situation.

“We as a business Sports Entertainment Network provide the content to AFL.com.au, and that deal was done at the time when we didn’t have SEN as an owner of our own platform, so I thought it was probably a little bit cheeky or disingenuous to be further amplifying whatever those comments were onto our platform.”

Two days after the AFL grand final, Smith posted a series of photos from the Cats’ Mad Monday celebrations, including one of him with teammate Max Holmes, who had come dressed up as respected journalist Wilson.

Smith said Wilson “never looked better” in the caption and added the dripping water emoji.

In the since-deleted interview, Robinson said: “Some of the players are really starting to s*** me. I want to talk about Bailey Smith and everyone is going to call me a woke, silly old fool, but for Bailey Smith to abuse the photographer is one thing, that’s really poor.

“For Bailey Smith to be a part of an Instagram photo with (Holmes dressed as) Caroline Wilson and put a semen (water) emoji up there is one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen a player do.

“If it was my mother, or my sister, or my wife, I can guarantee you myself and my three brothers would be going around to say hello to Bailey Smith.

“Who does he think he is to put a semen (water) emoji on a photo of (Holmes dressed as) Caroline Wilson?

“It’s not woke to call it out. It’s decency.

“Be a decent person. And for the AFL to allow that to go unpunished is one of the most disgusting inactions by the AFL in my time in football.

“We can all laugh at Bailey Smith and say he’s just a young man, you can have fun without being a pig.”