But what? Longer bans - but how much longer? Tighter rules,leaving no loopholes? But none of the three offenders last weekend escaped through a loose clause. Sin bin? Red card? gives it moral authority,and there is evidence to say that in-game penalties work at lower levels and in other sports to an extent.
Melbourne’s Kysaiah Pickett ploughs into Bailey Smith on Saturday night at the MCG.AAP
But is evenan extent acceptable? And what is it anyway? Here’s the nub. The real question is not about a penal code,but about what would be a tolerable balance between physicality and injury,especially head injury. Where would players,fans and the community draw the line?
It’s a question that never gets asked because it’s not possible to answer it conclusively except in a way that no one will countenance.
when this topic was last hot. “The aim should be to find ways to ameliorate or eliminate the likelihood of serious head injury while preserving the culture of the game,” he said. “I don’t think we could eliminate the possibility.”
Contact is central to that culture. A non-contact form of AFL was trialled five years ago;you might have blinked one day and missed the anodyne
Lance Franklin’s bump on Sam Collins.Fox Footy
In this bind,change happens incrementally,following at a short distance public attitudes to violence. It is necessarily behind because for all time,people have amused themselves either by indulging in or watching physical combat at a level that would not pass muster in the street. Only the level changes.
Lions versus slaves fell out of favour some time ago,bare-knuckled fistfights more recently. Boxing and bullfighting are still with us,but less celebrated than before. So-called caged sports look to be nearly through a predictably fleeting half-life.
Likewise,footy has changed. The mindset of players and fans is radically different from a generation ago. Spectators have been conditioned not to expect naked violence,players either trained or deterred from deploying violence as distinct from physicality - and incidentally,without any compromise to the spectacle. The weekend’s trio of incidents was remarkable for its rarity.
But they have brought the issue to the forefront of footy’s consciousness again,perhaps triggering further gradational change. That’s how it goes.
Adelaide’s Shane McAdam bumps GWS’s Jacob Wehr on Saturday.Fox Footy
This time,though,there is one small,but perhaps telling difference. None of the three victims were badly hurt (as far as we know). The public conversation is not taking place in the sort of heat that sometimes passes for light. It is possible to concentrate on the intrinsic culpability of the players’ actions,separate from their consequences.
To these eyes,what this made abundantly clear was that the problem is the action,not its random outcome.
“I don’t care what anyone says,[the big bump] is just a part of footy that I bloody love,” tweeted former Carlton and Brisbane midfielder Mitch Robinson on Monday. “Take that out of the game and it’s just who is the most talented.” God forbid.
Once,all would have been on his side. Now,risky as it is to generalise about public sentiment,there appears to be a growing consensus that egregious cases like those on the weekend should be dealt with on the spot (abetted by the ARC). I think it’s worth trying. In any case,some sort of further tightening can be expected.
On a scale that runs from open slather to total ban,we’re much closer than ever to prohibition. But there will always be contact,there will always be bumps,some of those bumps will go wrong and - say it softly - some will result in concussions and other injuries. The incidence will change,but not the fact.
