AFL great Kane Cornes has taken aim at Richmond young gun Sydney Stack for performing a cliff-jumping stunt just weeks before the start of the AFL season.
In a video posted to social media by teammate Tom Lynch, 21-year-old Stack backflips off a cliff and into a rockpool, reported by multiple sources to be at least three metres deep, in Blairgowrie on the Mornington Peninsula.
Cornes said he was in disbelief watching the video.
“I thought, ‘That could not be Sydney Stack 33 days out from round 1 when his career is on a knife’s edge’,” Cornes said on SEN Breakfast.
Stack, who signed a contract extension with the Tigers in October, is considered a future star of the game, but his career has already been overshadowed by two high-profile Covid-related breaches, the second of which landed him in a prison cell in December 2020.
“In 2020 he breached protocols and the club was fined $100,000, last year he was arrested and fined $6000 for breaching quarantine,” Cornes said.
“This is a guy who is that talented, it’s going to be a travesty if he doesn’t play for 12 years and 200 games.
“What’s he thinking?
“I’m so shocked by (the stunt).”
Cornes’ co-host pointed out that Stack might have performed the stunt before and known how to execute it safely.
“He looks like he is an expert at doing backflips off cliffs … I wish he was an expert at playing football,” Cornes replied.
Lynch didn’t escape Cornes’ wrath either. The Tigers named Dylan Grimes and Toby Nankervis as their 2022 co-captains on Monday afternoon, but prior to the announcement, Lynch had been considered a potential candidate for the captaincy.
“What’s Tom Lynch doing filming this?” Cornes said.
“The next day I pick up the paper and I read a story that Tom Lynch wants to be captain of Richmond. If he wants to be captain of Richmond, he says to Stack, ‘Hey Sydney, back off the cliff, we don’t need you jumping and breaking your neck or breaking a leg’.
“This is a guy whose career is on life support and I see him doing backflips from seven or eight metres up into what appears to be shallow water.
“Jumping of a cliff and doing a backflip into shallow water is a risk I wouldn’t be taking if my career was on life support 33 days out from round 1.”
Stack spent the 2020 Christmas and new year period behind bars for breaching Western Australia’s home quarantine orders and was later fined $6000.
Prior to his time in jail, Stack was sent home from Queensland, where the majority of the 2020 AFL season was played, after breaching the league’s Covid-19 protocols.
He and Callum Coleman-Jones were suspended for 10 games each and fined $75,000 between them for leaving Richmond’s biosecurity bubble to attend a Surfers Paradisexjmtzyw venue.
“I’m not for one minute comparing the seriousness of getting arrested and being locked up to jumping off a cliff,” Cornes said.
“But when you weigh up the whole package and that he’s very lucky to get a one-year contract extension at Richmond and he’s very lucky to still be on an AFL list considering what he’s put that club through.
“Does he take his career seriously is what I’m asking.”
