SACKED premiership ruckman Darren Jolly is courageous.

To label someone a coward is a comment with some serious bite.

In Western movies, the word coward was enough to conjure a gun-drawing duel in the main street.

Jolly used the highly emotive term about the favourite son and now coach of the most powerful AFL club. It drew the scathing wrath of the Magpie army.

Many AFL followers were quick to write off Jolly as sour grapes – “shot himself in the foot” is how a few calling past this reporter’s desk have described it – but he spoke his mind and put his neck on the line. He was honest.

Coward, of course, was the word that jumped out and was pumped up in media reports from Jolly’s interview with Fairfax.

Taken in context, Jolly just wanted the truth about his delisting and felt Buckley denied him this.

He says he and the coach had well-entrenched issues with each other.

We do not like disharmony at our clubs, it goes against that ingrained sense of team unity and loyalty in sport.

For a player to speak out against a coach, especially one so beloved as Buckley, is a particularly massive taboo.

Jolly made you feel a little uneasy.

But why should it?

To silence Jolly leaves fans uninformed to make up their own minds and left in a blissful ignorance about goings on at the wonderful state-of-the-art Westpac Centre.

Five key players, including captain Jay Cheep, walked from Sunbury this year after a post-grand final meeting in which a small group lobbied for a new coach.

When the Lions re-appointed Rick Horwood, these senior players took their games to other fields in what, on the surface, appeared the result of budget cuts at Clarke Oval.

These players later cited communication troubles and “stale” repetitive training as the crux of their issues.

Agree with them or not, players who put their bodies on the line each week deserve to be heard.

This does not infer players should air all petty club problems, but they should not be forced to maintain a complete facade either.

Jolly labelled Nathan Buckley a coward for how Buckley delivered the news in early September that Jolly was no longer needed by Collingwood.

This was not a quick, hot-headed reaction that tore apart a team. Jolly broke his silence and spoke out after the AFL pre-season and rookie drafts were complete this week and his chances to join a fourth AFL club as a player were effectively finished.

It has been close to three months since he was shown the door by the Pies.

This was not the first time Jolly has candidly spoken out and annoyed the club, but just how much do you have to toe the club line without losing a sense of self? A premiership ruckman with Sydney and Collingwood with 237 AFL games under his belt, Jolly wanted and should have been treated with respect.

Jolly wanted Buckley to be up-front about a change in the club direction. Coaches will tell you making cuts, even just in weekly selections, can be emotionally draining. It is never something a player wants to hear.

Buckley took this angle in response to Jolly speaking out this week, measuredly claiming “ears were closed pretty quickly” and sympathised with the ruckman coming to grips with his “footy mortality”.

He refused to fire back at Jolly, which was praised by the populace. Buckley was shying away from the issue rather than show leadership and addressing Jolly’s issue.

But really, his dodge was pretty patronising and reinforced exactly what Jolly has been saying. Rather than leaving the AFL on a bad note, Jolly’s career should be remembered for how he played the game and the courage to voice his opinion like a leader, rather than sitting back in the name of forced harmony.

melanie.whelan@fairfaxmedia.com.au