Collingwood have been shredded by their own fans after the club used their own injury update as “clickbait”.
The Magpies’ social media team posted an image of premiership coach Craig McRae on Tuesday, with a quote, “He’ll miss the rest of the season.”
Accompanied with a bandaged head emoji, the tweet (which has since been deleted) read: “Fly announced this morning a defender will unfortunately miss the remainder of the season.”
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While most mainstream media outlets often hide details in captions and headlines to encourage readers to click through to an article, fans did not take kindly to the practice being used by an official AFL club.
Fans were angered more when they realised the player in question was Jakob Ryan, who has only managed just one game at AFL level way back in 2023.
Collingwood have been mocked for clickbaiting their own fans with Jakob Ryan injury news. Credit: Getty Images/Collingwood Ryan, who injured his foot in a VFL game, is out with an acute fifth metatarsal fracture and will undergo surgery.
And while the injury is sad news for Ryan, using the senior coach to tease it on social media certainly made it seem like a blow for the AFL team that is one of the flag favourites this year.
Fans were, needless to say, less than impressed and vented on social media.
“Collingwood admin just clickbaited their own fans for a Jakob Ryan injury update. Incredible,” one fan blasted on X (formerly Twitter).
“Crazy click baiting your fans and members,” another mystified fan said.
And another: “Clickbaiting your own fans! Nice!”
And another: “Seriously click-baiting your own members and fans. Grow up Collingwood…. Unprofessional.”
And another raged: “Guys, you’re a football club not the Herald Sun. Just say who it is without the clickbait.”
And another: “Hey social media team, your trying to drive views of your youtube video though clickbait? Really? be better.”
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7NEWS chief AFL reporter Mitch Cleary also gave the Pies a cheeky clip on The Agenda Setters during fan-favourite segment The Swipe.
“And I’m swiping the Collingwood footy club, they’re taking a leaf out of our book as in the journos,” Cleary said.
“They’re clickbaiting their own fans … You had to click through the link to find out if out who was it.”
The ‘clickbaiting’ certainly didn’t catch out everyone, though.
AFL great (and former Collingwood champion) Dale Thomas asked: “Who was it? … I didn’t click.”