Richmond forward Marlion Pickett has been involved in an ugly incident with a member of the Marvel Stadium crowd during the Tigers’ AFL clash with the Western Bulldogs on Friday night.
Marcus Bontempelli had just kicked a goal when Pickett found himself at arm’s length of the crowd behind the goals.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Marlion Pickett tapped on the shoulder by a member of the crowd.
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A heckling member of the crowd leant over the barrier to tap Pickett on the shoulder, and appeared to say something to the Tigers forward.
Pickett immediately reacted in what looked like anger, knocking the fan’s drink out of his hand in retaliation.
Channel 7 boundary rider Abbey Holmes had all the details of the incident.
Marlion Pickett was touched by a member of the crowd. Credit: Channel 7
“There was a very interesting incident throughout this third quarter. Bontempelli had just kicked his third goal, and you can see there, Marlion Pickett with a member in the crowd,” Holmes said as a replay of the incident was shown.
“He got grabbed and straight away reacted, knocked his drink off.
“You don’t like to see that. Crowd in attendance can never touch players in that way.
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“So, (Richmond footy boss) Tim Livingstone as well, just his hand around Marlion Pickett, just making sure that he is okay.
“You don’t see that very often in AFL. That is absolutely not on. Security was straight there on the scene.
“Hopefully Marlon is okay.”
Richmond great Matthew Richardson feared something untoward might have been said by the member of the crowd.
“And he said something as well. You don’t want to see that,” he said.
Speaking after the game, 7NEWS Melbourne’s Tom Browne said “it is clearly a concern”.
“Pickett interacted there with a member of the fan cheer squad near the Bulldogs’ cheer squad,” Browne said.
“Tim Livingstone, the Tigers’ footy boss, he said he made inquiries with the AFL match official and obviously Pickett on an incident with that cheer squad.
“There’s two issues there. Obviously, A, the contact with the crowd member, which is clearly inappropriate. Second, whether anything inappropriate was said.
“I checked it out obviously with Richmond as a preliminary step. The AFL have said they would review the security and match manager’s report to understand exactly what happened and who the person was.
“The clear message coming from the AFL tonight is you cannot do what that fan did. They will work through that issue in coming days.
“The secondary issue, and I don’t want to pre-empt this, is whether anything was inappropriate was said, but we could see Tim Livingstone, who does a great job, obviously go up to Pickett just to check on that and he did follow up with the AFL officials.”