Fremantle president Steve Harris has taken a swipe at Andrew Demetriou for the AFL chief executive's attack on Ross Lyon's integrity on Friday morning.
Fremantle's sudden sacking of Mark Harvey on Thursday evening and their rapid-fire appointment of former St Kilda coach Lyon less than 24 hours later saw the AFL boss vent his spleen on Melbourne radio.
"I feel desperately for Mark Harvey," Demetriou told 3AW.
"(And) I think it is understandable that people are questioning the value of contracts and commitments and so forth."
"It is reasonable for people to ask, if coaches are asking players to commit and to play a certain way and asking them to sign up to certain values, you can understand - and I'm using a generalisation here, not talking about anyone specifically - but if all of a sudden if they don't behave in the way that we're asking them to behave, it sort of reeks of hypocrisy and people see through that."
Harris, though was less than amused by Demetriou's comments as the Dockers' attempt to minimise the negative fallout from their shock move.
"I've spoken to Andrew this morning because I think his comments were inappropriate," Harris said.
"I've advised him of that. He doesn't have a first hand understanding of what has transpired."
"He's expressed to me his comments were personal opinion and I don't think he's fully informed of the situation."
"Andrew's got strong opinions on a lot of things, in this case he's ill informed."
"We have at all times in this process carried out to the letter of the contract with everyone's contract."
"And, when you have employment discussions between the individuals as everyone in this room will be aware, necessarily you need to keep them confidential."
While Demetriou was keen to put the boot in, Carlton coach Brett Ratten, said he wouldn't be judging Lyon too harshly.
In Perth preparing for the Blues' cut-throat semi-final clash with West Coast, Ratten said he still felt desperately sorry for Harvey when he heard the news.
"I heard about it last night when we got off the plane and you really feel sorry for Mark, how it's happened."
"You know, when you go into plan and do all these things going forward and then just to have your job removed from you so quickly, I think it's a real hard one for him to take and I feel sorry for him, so hopefully he's all right."
However, he felt the attacks on Lyon's character had been too harsh.
"We don't know what's going on between Ross and St Kilda and Fremantle and Ross so we'd only be just looking from afar and making comments," he said.
"I don't think we have the right to do that."
"Ross has made the decision on probably the information he's had from both clubs ... and for his family and those things as well."
"So I don't think we can sit here and judge what Ross has done."