While most of us enjoyed this year’s AFL Grand Final pre-match performance featuring Tom Jones and Ed Sheerean, Eddie McGuire has taken issue with Sir Tom’s song choice. According to the broadcaster and Collingwood president, it was “inappropriate” of Jones to play his 1968 hit Delilah.
“I just thought it was the wrong selection,” McGuire said on Triple M radio this morning (via News Limited). McGuire took issue with the selection of a song that details a man killing his cheating girlfriend, particularly given the cultural climate currently permeating the sports world.
“Obviously at the moment domestic violence is a massive issue in world sport. In the National Football League in America they are getting absolutely smashed because of their tin-eared approach to domestic violence,” said McGuire, referring to the recent scandal surrounding NFL player Ray Rice, who was suspended for assaulting his then-fiancée.
“Tom has got a songbook bigger than the yellow pages… Don’t walk into the fire. Sing It’s Not Unusual, sing the Green, Green Grass of Home… It was an inappropriate song in 2014,” added McGuire.
McGuire wasn’t the only one who took issue with the song pick. Several AFL fans took to Twitter to vent their disappointment with the legendary Welsh singer. Several others also tweeted their surprise that the AFL recruited Sheeran to sing his hit The A Team, a ballad about a drug-addicted prostitute.
