Kane Cornes defends himself over ‘embarrassing' report on Luke Beveridge exchange

7NEWS

27-05-2025

Channel 7 commentator Kane Cornes has taken aim at rival broadcaster Fox Footy over an 'embarrassing report' about his fiery exchange with Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge.
Cornes and Beveridge exchanged words ahead of the Bulldogs' clash with Geelong last Thursday night with vision of the incident caught on Seven's coverage.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Kane Cornes defends himself over coverage of Luke Beveridge saga.
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Cornes has been a strong critic of Beveridge over the years, believing the team has underperformed since winning the 2016 premiership.
The Port Adelaide great explained the situation on Seven's coverage and the following day on SEN radio, revealing he just said 'g'day Bevo' after the Bulldogs coach was staring at him.
Corned didn't have a problem with Beveridge's reaction, but he did have a major issue with how Fox Footy journalist Jon Ralph reported the incident.
'Cornes was already banned from the Dogs' rooms after a series of negative articles and comments in regards to Beveridge. The club believes it's personal – called him a 'poor ambassador for his football club', called for his sacking repeatedly,' Ralph said in his cross on the night of the incident.
'People around the situation felt like Cornes stepped into his space and they're thankful that Beveridge did walk on. Cornes said Beveridge was 'starting quite strongly at him', so he said 'G'day Bevo' – and it wasn't received well.'
'The question here is whether this is deliberately disrespectful and antagonistic, whether it was the time and the space for Cornes to talk to Beveridge.
'It'll be great for the Cornes publicity machine, but I think Beveridge in a really highly emotional state in what he would believe to be a safe space pre-match dealing with all the issues he faced with the Bailey Smith saga, this was not the time and the place and felt like he was specifically baited from someone who the club had already banned.
'Certainly an unnecessary and sorry saga that continues between Cornes and Beveridge.'
Speaking on The Agenda Setters, Cornes called out Ralph to apologise for the 'embarrassing' report that said the commentator encroached into Beveridge's space.
'I read that too and it was ridiculous,' Cornes said.
'I think it's important as your journalist to have your integrity intact and the last thing you want to do is mislead and misrepresent an incident that went down and you want to get both sides of what happened.
'What Jon Ralph said there is embarrassing, he misled and misrepresented what happened, and all he had to do was check the vision before he wanted to run a narrative that suited him for the benefit of his channel and himself.
'I thought those comments were really ordinary. I have not heard from Jon, I would have expected an apology off the back of that, but all he had to do was ring me and asked me what happened or look at the vision and not take the word of the Western Bulldogs word for word before he went with that.'
The Agenda Setters then showed another angle of the incident, which showed Cornes standing his ground and only taking a step towards Beveridge after the Dogs coach walked past.
'Where have I encroached on the space? After Luke Beveridge has said something to me, I walked towards him and said 'Aren't I allowed to say hello?' So for Jon to go with that is embarrassing,' Cornes added.
Fellow Channel 7 commentator Nick Riewoldt, who was alongside Cornes when the incident unfolded, said it was anything but 'antagonistic'.
'I was right behind you and the first words that were uttered were you saying 'Bevo', so if that's antagonistic then I probably need to check the definition of it,' he added.