Mr Newman, who was an onlooker in the spat between Ayres and a group of Cats fans during Sunday's clash at Skilled Stadium, labelled the former Geelong coach ``unprofessional''.

He said Ayres overreacted to crowd taunts when he raised his middle finger at a Geelong supporter twice during the match.

``I can only comment on what I saw, but what I saw was an overreaction,'' Mr Newman said.

``He copped the normal jeers from the crowd, and one bloke yelled out `Welcome back to our turf, Ayresy'.

``The next thing I turned around and he's giving us the one-finger salute.

``He tried to keep it hidden, but he held it up for about 20 seconds.

``It was pretty unprofessional of him considering two players have been fined already.

``He came out afterwards and said he was thick-skinned, but if he's so think-skinned he shouldn't have done it, especially not twice.''

``From what I could hear he copped a bit of flak, but there wasn't any bad language or anything,'' Mr Newman said. ``He shouldn't have reacted the way he did - I still can't believe he did it.''