AFL footballer Marc Murphy has defended his wife, model Jessie Murphy (nee Habermann), after on-field sledging “overstepped the mark”.

St Kilda footballers admitted to making derogatory comments during Saturday’s match towards the Carlton captain, though did not say if they were about a rumoured relationship between Ms Murphy and former footballer Wayne Carey that both parties strongly deny.

The comments, which Mr Carey denied were about him, sparked a massive brawl between the two sides at Etihad Stadium in Melbourne.

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A post shared by Jessie Murphy (@cestvogue) on Feb 22, 2017 at 12:04am PST

On Monday, Mr Murphy addressed the incident and the “highly inappropriate” comments that followed.

“I would like to respond to highly inappropriate social media commentary that has escalated in the past few days,” Mr Murphy said in a statement shared on Twitter.

“I want to be clear that these comments are untrue, hurtful to my wife and family and show a lack of respect to women.

“We would like to move on and will not be making any further comment.”

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Former Kangaroos star and current media personality Mr Carey said he has confirmed the comments were not about him or the false rumour.

“I wasn’t part of any of that sledging. My name wasn’t brought up by any of the St Kilda players to Marc Murphy,” he said 7Mate’s Talking Footy.

“That’s been confirmed by Marc and everyone, saying that I was not involved in that conversation.”

Mr Carey rubbished the rumours and said the speculation about his relationship with Ms Murphy, who he’d “never, ever had a conversation with”, had started “a couple of years ago”.

“I was asked about a rumour that was going around. It was about Marc Murphy and his wife,” he said.

“It had no truth whatsoever, so I didn’t really worry about it too much. But then it started to grow legs a little bit more and a little bit more.”

St Kilda captain Jarryn Geary said on Monday that the comments that sparked the brawl “probably overstepped the mark”.

St Kilda’s coach Alan Richardson said he phoned Mr Murphy to address the situation.

Ms Murphy has not responded to the incident publicly.

Do you think more needs to be done about on-field sledging?