Port Adelaide chairman David Koch has dismissed comments made by premiership-winning coach Mick Malthouse that the AFL should abandon its China experiment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Malthouse, who last coached in the AFL in 2015, said playing games in Shanghai should be the "last thing" the AFL should be doing, due to the way the Chinese Government handled the coronavirus in its early stages.
Port Adelaide has played games at Shanghai's Jiangwan Stadium since 2017 and has formed a healthy relationship with business in Asia as a result of the deal, and Koch was quick to lash out at the often outspoken Malthouse, calling him a "dinosaur" with an uninformed opinion, who would "bring back White Australia policy" if he could.
"Mick Malthouse has zero expertise and so zero relevance in any of this," Koch said on Fox Footy on Saturday.
"(We have) 37 percent of Australia's experts go to China. Using football as a way to build a bridge with China has been very important.
"Mick Malthouse doesn't know what he's talking about. If it was up to Mick Malthouse, he'd bring back the White Australia policy in the 50s.
"In this regard, he is a bit of a dinosaur. [On] China... it is important to keep that bridge built from a community and business level, and we play an important role in that and will into the future. Both ourselves and the AFL have full-time staff up there.
"If Mick Malthouse made a comment on footy I'd give it a glancing look (but) when it comes to China, absolutely zero relevance whatsoever."
Malthouse responded on ABC radio later on Saturday, saying he was "disappointed" in Koch's personal attack, which he described as "very offline".
"I've been called a 'dinosaur' before, that's water off a duck's back. I've also made football comments before and some are right and some are wrong," Malthouse said.
The premiership-winning coach at Collingwood and West Coast added he "gets on famously" with people of Chinese descent who are part of his extended family.