COLLINGWOOD president Eddie McGuire and newsbreaker Damian Barrett reportedly had a heated off-air clash before last week’s edition of The Footy Show.

The Herald Sun reported on Wednesday morning that “tensions boiled over” between McGuire and Barrett after clashing over the main news story of last Thursday’s show, which was allegedly involving the Magpies.

The report suggested the disagreement was heated and “had the walls shaking”.

Barrett didn’t appear on the show that night, but appeared on Tuesday night’s show where he reported that Hawks great Shane Crawford had been asked by coach Alastair Clarkson to help the club’s pitch to lure Tom Lynch.

A week earlier, Barrett narrowly missed out on breaking the ASADA investigation into young Magpie Sam Murray following his positive matchday test story on The Footy Show. Instead, he broke it online on AFL Media the next morning.

When asked on The Sounding Board podcast last week if there was ever a moment he thought he could get the story up for the Murray The Footy Show, Barrett said: “No there wasn’t.

“I attempted to check (the Murray story) out on the Thursday … I told the producer of The Footy Show, but also told him that ‘I haven’t got anything to go with until I get more’ — and then basically a decision was made … (but) I reckon it got to 8 o’clock and I was still trying to (strengthen the story up for broadcast).”

Asked if he had let McGuire know of his intentions to break the Murray story, Barrett said: “No I didn’t — and that’s not unusual either because I had nothing. I couldn’t look him in the eye and say ‘I’m going to go with this story’ or ‘should I go?’ I had nothing more.”

Barrett said his hold on the Murray story strengthened in the minutes after The Footy Show was off-air.

“I was walking down the stairs, felt the phone in my pocket go off, had a look at it when I got in the car after I turned it on and I was on the phone for about half an hour with someone, who didn’t confirm it but made me think ‘OK this is right’,” he said.

Barrett said he then pitched the story to AFL Media on the Friday morning.

The story was put up before 8am (AEST) after being given a legal tick by an “external lawyer”. But it was then taken down — following a complaint from the AFL — before a tweaked version was published again.