'Started to cry': Steve Price walks back controversial AFLW remarks
Controversial media commentator Steve Price has offered an apology of sorts for his remarks about the AFLW competition last week, revealing the impact his words had had on his own daughter.
Price, speaking on Triple M’s Hot Breakfast program with Eddie McGuire and Luke Darcy, came under fire after saying the money invested into women’s football was ‘ridiculous’ and that he ‘wouldn’t cross the street to watch it’.
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Both McGuire and Darcy took issue with Price’s comments, while a caller labelled the commentator a ‘goose’.
Taking to the airwaves again on Tuesday morning, Price read out a message he had received from his daughter, calling it ‘a form of an apology from me’ and walking back some, but not all, of his prior comments.
“I normally wouldn’t do this, but (my daughter) sent me a WhatsApp message which I am gonna read out,” Price said.
“She said, ‘Dad, I have to say I started to cry reading your views on AFLW. I’m incredibly disappointed, and it makes me very angry.
“‘You raised me to love the game of AFL, and thanks to the AFLW competition, I finally got the courage to join a club and play last year.
“‘Having a women’s league encouraged me to get involved with the sport I’d watched and admired my entire life. Without it, I never would have played it.
“‘It makes me pretty furious to know you don’t care’.”
While he refused to back down from his questioning of the amount of funding provided to the AFLW competition by the AFL, Price acknowledged where he had gone wrong in his criticism of the league.
I'm kind of sick of the 'Steve Price is actually a nice guy' schtick. This is the second time in a few weeks he's made a terribly misogynistic comment, and is now only "apologising" because he brought his own daughter to tears with his bigotry.
— Kris Read (@DesignedToFade) March 10, 2020
“That struck home for me. When one of your children says that to you, it pulls you up pretty sharp,” he said.
“I should go watch a game live and sit there and have a view at the end of that.
“I’m not changing my view that I think a lot of money’s been spent where it perhaps shouldn’t be.”
