Mick Molloy and the Ten network have paid the wife of a former football coach $85,000 after losing a TV program defamation case. “Obviously I’m very disappointed with the decision,” Molloy told his Triple M Hot Breakfast show listeners. “I’ve been broadcasting for 25 years and I’ve never been sued. Before The Game is a very good-natured show. It’s a light entertainment program. It’s a comedy program. Kids watch it with their parents. There is never any malice in this show.”

The comedy defence did not work in this case, where Nicole Cornes, the wife of former Crows coach Graham, won her battle against comments made by Molloy in 2008 on the TEN TV Sports Show called Before the Game.

Molloy suggested Cornes had slept with former footballer Stuart Dew, a friend of her stepson, Port Adelaide player Chad Cornes.

Molloy said it was never meant to be anything other than a joke, but “unfortunately the court has seen it differently and I can’t do anything about that. I’m very disappointed, I’m very sorry it has happened… When I found out her feelings were hurt I apologised on air and I didn’t have to be asked to do it.”