Geelong coach Chris Scott backs club’s behavioural record after incidents involving himself and Bailey Smith

Geelong coach Chris Scott is adamant he and his club have a “pretty good track record” when it comes to behavioural and cultural issues and defended the official silence in the wake of incidents involving himself and superstar Bailey Smith. The premiership winner apologised to an AFL staff member he confronted at a post-game press conference, while Smith also said sorry, via text message, after abusing a female photographer at training. Smith is yet to speak publicly about his blow-up, while Scott addressed his incident for the first time on Thursday ahead of his side’s preliminary final against Hawthorn. Scott dismissed a suggestion he reacted to the presence of a vision-impaired journalist and instead said his reaction was based on “a few little issues” and conceded he didn’t handle it as he would have liked. “There’s been a few little issues that have popped up where we thought that maybe we could have communicated with the AFL a little bit better to help them understand how we’re feeling about certain issues,” he said. “These are private conversations, and I don’t think I should be explaining it in great detail without the AFL being there to put their side of the story forward. But even that amplifies it even more than it needs to be. “If you looked at any one issue, you’d think, well, that’s not a big deal … but for me it was a culmination of issues that we felt we hadn’t done a good enough job of explaining our position to them, which therefore meant they didn’t really say anything at all to us. “I didn’t handle a certain situation as well as I would have liked to and let my frustrations get the better of me, and for that I spoke to the person involved, and even from their side they acknowledged there were some frustrations that built up. I should have handled that situation better, but I acknowledge that it was a private conversation.” Scott said he had addressed Smith’s behaviour, a second instance of him confronting a photographer, suggesting the star recruit was “less trusting” of media than he should be. He conceded there would be little sympathy for Smith but couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. “Even the way Bailey responded in that moment, it’s been a build-up of things that have led Bailey to believe that he should be less trusting than I think he should be,” Scott said. “We’ll work through these things and you’ll see his side of the story a little bit. I don’t think there’s any sympathy in this room in particular, and I respect it to be honest. “I’m pretty comfortable that while we acknowledge we’re not perfect that we’ve got a pretty good track record. “It’s a contradiction almost: a highly marketable public person (Smith) who puts a lot of it out there but then intensely personal about some issues. “We’ve worked really hard for a long period of time to get ourselves to the situation where we’re really proud of the way we go about our business. “But within that, there’s always been this acknowledgment that we’re all human. That’s part of developing a good environment. While not accepting of behaviour that you don’t approve of, you do acknowledge that there’ll be hiccups along the way.” Scott said while he was happy to talk about the incident, his club wasn’t an “open book” and he’d take any criticism that attracted. “If you’re less than expansive around the actual mechanics of the discussion or the exact words that were used, you do open yourselves up to the criticism that ‘well, if you’re not telling us, we’re just going to assume it’s not happening’. I don’t think you should make that assumption,” he said. “We recognise the interest. Over time, you’d probably respect the fact that we’ll be pretty open, but we’re not an absolute open book.”