What a week it has been in the AFL landscape. Two players have been suspended for tackles that, up until a year or two ago, would have been applauded. Experts, commentators, past players and fans have lambasted the AFL in unison – “what has happened to our great game?” they cry!
This is a pretty hot topic, and as I commenced writing the AFL appeals board is listening to GWS’ lawyers successfully argue with AFL lawyers over whether or not Toby Bedford’s suspension should be upheld.
How did we get here?
Great question Timbo! The answer is not very simple (or very short) so I’m going to break it down as best as I can, to try and make this rant as sensical as possible. So let’s start with the obvious.
The tackles:
I think we can all agree that neither Cameron nor Bedford intended to hurt their respective “victims”. What were Cameron and Bedford trying to achieve then? What is the job of the tackler?
Since junior footy these guys have been taught that the job of the tackler is to prevent the player you are tackling from being able to dispose of the footy legally. To do this you tie up the player with the ball – you try and lock up one or both of there arms and drag them to ground, and in days gone by if you were able to make the tackle hurt, then that was even better! Although these days in the AFL, it seems there is no illegal way to dispose of the ball in a tackle, this is what has been drilled into any footballer at any level – tackling is non-negotiable!
And what is the job of the player being tackled? To try and negate the tackle by either freeing up a body part (or parts) to allow them to legally dispose of the ball, or shrugging their shoulders/dropping their knees/throwing their head back to try and convince the umpire that the tackle was illegal. Joel Selwood made a career out of the second option (sorry Cats fans) until Jack Ginnivan came along and apparently ruined it for everybody.
So to put this in the context in the cases above, Duggan is running towards Cameron with the ball in his hands, he runs front on into Cameron who wraps both arms around him and makes it nearly impossible for Duggan to legally dispose of the ball.
Great job, Charlie Cameron!
Duggan then also does his job, by trying to break out of the tackle in the only space he had available – behind him. This results in both players falling to the ground, and as both of Duggan’s arms are trapped between himself and Cameron, he lands on his back and hits his head on the turf. A few years ago that would be holding the ball and a free kick.
In Bedford’s case, Tim Taranto hits a clearance at speed and takes possession of the ruck tap with Bedford right up his clacker. Bedford lunges forward, grabs Taranto from behind around his arms, and the momentum they both have, combined with Taranto now wearing a Bedford sized backpack causes them both to hit the deck – the tackle was so good that Taranto couldn’t even try and escape it or get the ball away. Taranto’s arms are wrapped up, so he cannot put an arm out to break his fall (unless he wanted to drop the ball and give away a free kick), so his head makes contact with the turf, and he is concussed. I don’t recall if Bedford won a free kick for holding the ball (probably not) but he should have. It was the type of tackle that would be celebrated in years gone by.
As a side note on the Bedford one, some of you loyal readers may remember my pre-season article regarding rule changes and how the AFL had changed the interpretation of what constitutes rough conduct/dangerous tackles and highlighted a rundown tackle by Dan Butler that resulted in Nick Blakey concussion. They also were at pains to point out that they are not pushing to take the run-down tackle out of the game, which at the time I said “sounds like a president saying a coach’s job is safe, a week before they sack him”. Very interested to see what happens to the run-down tackle in the coming off-season.
So, here we have four players all just doing their jobs. Applying skills and strength in areas they have honed them in from a very young age, but because two of those players were concussed, the other two HAD to be suspended – not that the AFL decides solely on outcome or anything, right?
It reminds of a guy who once approached myself and my friend in the street when we were teenagers, we were a little cautious (ya know, stranger danger and all that) and he said “don’t worry guys, you can trust me, I’m a Real Estate Agent” – the AFL is currently the consummate Real Estate Agent with their silver tongues not fooling anyone. But are the AFL all to blame? Why are they doing this – great question which leads me to the next point
Concussions:
Nearly every rule change the AFL has made over the last couple of years is an effort to stamp out concussions in our game.
Why would they want to do that? There are currently countless past players suffering from the long-term effects of CTE as a result of consistent head knocks, leading to lawsuits that could potentially cost the AFL millions.
So, what is the league to do here? Do they just ban tackling? AFL is a contact sport, and like any contact sport, accidents and injuries will occur.
As a child I once split my lip open and cracked my two front teeth playing “blind tiggy” and that is not even meant to be a contact sport, but concrete walls are not very forgiving when you run into them face first. In fairness to my primary school, they banned the game of “blind tiggy” after that, and this was in the 80s when people were not so litigious. So, if we follow the example of my primary school, I guess the AFL should ban tackling, that might work. But what about next season, when a player takes a specky and a knee to the back of the head KO’s someone, well they better ban the specky too! If you take all of these things out of the game, then eventually you have 18 really fit blokes playing Netball on a bigger field with a different shaped ball!
The AFL are no dummies (although I may be giving them too much credit here), and they realise they cannot take these things out of the game, but they also cannot be seen to be doing absolutely nothing about concussions. Let’s put it this way, if the AFL were to say “stuff it, keep it all as is lads” then there is a very real chance that soon there would be no AFL to watch. While I know the state of the game is depressing at the moment, surely none of us want to see our game bankrupted by hungry lawyers who aren’t so much thinking about a past player’s welfare, but what percentage of the payout they get as their fee! They are about as trustworthy as real estate agents after all.
So the AFL finds itself involved in this delicate balancing act – they want to keep tackles and speckys (but not Specky Magee) and all of the contact elements of our game that make it exciting, but they also need to do something about concussions to protect themselves. Is what they are doing now the best way to go about it?
Probably not.
It is unfair to expect a player on the field, in the heat of battle to change the ingrained way they have played for years under the guise of “duty of care” – if it were the players who held the duty of care, wouldn’t these past players be suing the players who concussed them rather than the league? What was expected of Cameron and Bedford in their circumstances – should Cameron have just let go of Duggan as he tried to escape the tackle, in case he hurt him? Perhaps he should have lowered him to the ground gently before giving him a hot chocolate and tucking him in? Should Bedford have just let Taranto run away from him towards an open 50, just in case the outcome of the perfectly legal tackle he applied was a concussion – oh, there’s that word again – outcome.
Neither Cameron’s nor Bedford’s tackles were illegal. There was no driving motion, no slinging action, no chicken winging, no pressure points, no jumper punches no high contact – so why are they suspended?
OUTCOME!
The AFL is fooling themselves if they think none of us can see this, and the only bloody people they might be fooling is are themselves.
So what is the right way to go about it then Timbo, what is the answer?
Great question mate! You’re really on a roll.
Now, this may surprise some of you, but much to my parent’s eternal disappointment, I am not in fact a lawyer. So this next part does not hold any basis in legal fact, but does seem very much to me like common sense. How about, we keep the game as is and all current players sign a waiver that prevents them from suing the AFL in future years? All of these players know it is a contact sport, they live it season after season with their banged up bodies, and in a lot of cases they are compensated extremely well compared to your average Joe (as long as Joe is not a lawyer or a real estate agent). This may seem overly simplistic, but surely something along those lines can be discussed between the AFL and the AFLPA, right?
AFL: “Hey guys, so concussions suck right, we know that. But you literally signed a contract to play a sport that was always been at risk of injuries and concussions. How about you don’t sue us when your career is over because your quality of life has detoriated?”
AFLPA: “Well we should be entitled to something, right? These guys gave up years of their lives for their footy clubs, for their fans, and now Johnno can’t be in a room with electricity and gets nervous around hair”
AFL: “I mean, you guys were pretty well compensated, but how about this? How about if we set up some sort of fund to assist past players with their medical bills and what not in an effort to improve their quality of life, if they happen to suffer due to playing the game”?
I imagine then that everyone would just hug and the theme song from “Home and Away” would begin playing in the background – we did it boys! Problem solved!
As I said, I am no lawyer, but surely it could be this simple right? The way it is trending now is a literal shit show for everyone involved – people are laughing at the AFL powerbrokers who think we don’t know what is going on, players are getting suspended for weeks for laying tackles, and past players are still continuing with their class action lawsuits. Fans are turning away from the game in droves – something has to be done, and what they are doing now simply isn’t working!
The Process:
And one more thing. The MRO, followed by AFL Tribunal, followed by AFL appeals board is an absolute joke of a process.
A points system determining a player’s intent is where the stupidity begins – don’t even get me started on the fact that one bloke decides what the points are. I bet Michael Christian was really fun to play board games with when he was a kid!
If you don’t agree with the points, go to the tribunal -they’re impartial right? They definitely don’t have the same agenda as the AFL and the MRO! Bring your lawyer, and maybe a bio-mechanist – hell bring your dog and that dude who lives down the road who was really good at debating in high school.
If you’re still not satisfied, get your lawyer back on board and go see the AFL appeals board – it’s now been 4-6 days, but keep going, you never know! The AFL appeals board is literally a room filled with lawyers arguing facts of law – don’t believe me? Find the transcript of the hearing (and the outcome) from Charlie Cameron’s hearing tonight – I was following the live updates on the tram on the way from work and fell asleep standing up. Were it not for the brilliance of the occasional David Zita zinger, I probably would have missed my stop! I now remember why I never became a lawyer; it was when I realised that it was not like an episode of Boston Legal, and everything involved was as dry as that transcript!
I’ll save you the trouble of reading the whole thing and summarise the Appeals Board’s findings in the best way I can – the Tribunal made an error of law when handling down Cameron’s suspension, so the whole thing doesn’t apply. Boom! Cameron is free to play. I’ve just checked, and the same applies to Bedford. Correct outcomes in both cases, but boy, how about the process to get us there? What a ride!
Prepare yourselves now for a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory before I sign off – what if the AFL is WAY smarter than we give them credit for? What if the suspensions were handed down so the AFL can be seen to be combatting concussion? As Andrew Dillon said, player safety is the number one, two and three priority for the current tribunal system. So far so good – the AFL is taking this seriously. Then everyone loses their minds (rightly so) about two players being suspended for permissible actions, so a little word is had around the campfire “if you appeal, you’ll probably get off”… What if this was all a song and dance so the AFL is SEEN to be taking concussions seriously?
Nah, NOW I’m giving them way too much credit. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
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