I very much doubt it.
For people who spend an inordinate amount of time throwing around modern management buzzwords, their style of managing people seems to revolve around 19th century paternalistic disciplinary models.
If they want to maximise Simpson's output then forcing him to conform to their behavior models is a fools game. I going to assume he's not stupid and so would have realised that not getting on the plane was not in his best interests in so far as his relationship with the club was concerned. So there must have been a greater pull in the other direction. The club not being able to see that is poor management, spitting the dummy and going off message in a press conference because a player didn't follow your rules lacks professionalism.
Now, as a coach, you can puff your chest out and declare that he has to fall into line if he wants to play AFL football bla de bla bla but there comes a point where you've got to be smarter than that and do some actual managing. Understand what it is that an individual needs to do their best work. AFL are highly skilled, talented individuals, they're not unskilled labor. You need to tap into their talent, not bludgeon them into following a set of pre-designed patterns of behavior. It's out dated thinking.
In this case, perhaps not putting the young bloke with young kids on a plane at Easter, to not play football after he's just had the best day of his career, would have been the intelligent way to manage the him. Then when it went pear shaped, perhaps not calling him a sook would have been a better way to handle damage control.
Mistakes were made but Simpson's job is playing football. Lyon's job is to get Simpson to play the best football he can. Which one of them made a mistakw in their field of profession.
