Deven Robertson, the 22-year-old Lions midfielder who played a portion of his match against Collingwood without a jersey on Friday night, has gained over 20,000 new Instagram followers since the incident.
Roberston’s shirt was torn to shreds by Collingwood’s Brayden Maynard during an attempted tackle, as per 7News. Instead of replacing the jersey, Robertson continued to play on despite the shirt literally hanging on by a thread.
The player finally threw the whole thing away after he got caught with the ball. Robertson continued to play without a shirt before a Lions trainer was able to run to the field with a replacement.
After the game, Fox Footy noticed that the AFL player received a bucket load of new fans, jumping from 11.1K followers to 19.4K on his Instagram after the match.
This figure has since ballooned to over 33.4k as of Sunday morning.
Of course, with the chokehold the Matildas have on the nation (myself included), AFL players are now running around the field half-nakey, and the girlies online are FROTHING over it.
Many people have also flocked to TikTok to make a bunch of thirst traps for the player — and umm, yeah. They’re pretty good. Maybe I got lost scrolling through them but hey! I do it for you guys. Journalistic research or whatever.
Alongside the thirst traps were the never-ending thirst comments.
“The cameraman understood the assignment,” one person wrote.
“At least Collingwood did sometbing [sic] [right],” a second added.
“This is like the 7th video of him in a row I’ve seen and I’m not complaining,” wrote a third.
Comedian and TikToker Erin (@yungdaenerys) also poked fun at the wardrobe malfunction, mentioning that viewers were only just thirsting over Women’s World Cup France coach Hervé Renard.
I honestly know NOTHING about AFL. I’ve always had my heart fixed on soccer (ILY Western Sydney Wanderers) and NRL (up the Eels) but I think I may need to branch out to other sports …
As Kath Day-Knight said: “Oiye loike what oiye see.”
Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images
