I'm wondering whether it would be worthwhile for the Club to pursue a number of defamation suits with the media following recent reporting.  If we prioritise which cases to pursue where we have factual and procedural details documented, such as the handling of Tracc's injury, steering clear of anything involving culture and allegations re player behaviour, and engage external lawyers then I would think we could line our coffers while firing a warning shot to the media, while setting the record straight with members and the public.

If the players association involvement leads to an outcome where player safety procedure is improved then I am all for it - and I’m sure this is their aim, rather than having a pot shot at the MFC, as a number on here seem to believe.

  On 09/09/2024 at 21:44, Neil Crompton said:

If the players association involvement leads to an outcome where player safety procedure is improved then I am all for it - and I’m sure this is their aim, rather than having a pot shot at the MFC, as a number on here seem to believe.

I think we should all separate our own personal grievances with the club, or AFL, from how the media is reporting these issues. People on here are backing the misrepresentation of the club to support their own political agendas. We should stand united in getting to the truth, be it favourable or not. 

  On 09/09/2024 at 10:15, Demonland said:

 

This is where the MFC needs to get on the front foot and start slapping these [censored] for slander with an immediate law suit.

Under Roffey & Pert we've been way too quiet in general and way too soft as a club when it comes to standing up for the players and ourselves.

We should've tried to hang on to PJ for at least another 3 to 5 years.  He was a mile ahead of both in terms of representing and taking the initiative with the press / communicating with members.

  On 09/09/2024 at 21:30, Skuit said:

Is this a fact Jaded?

I have never heard them being taken anywhere else. 
It is the closest private hospital. 
 

Btw it’s up to the paramedics to decide where to take a player. Not up to the club. 

Edited September 9, 2024Sep 9 by Jaded No More

I am not one who believes in over censorship however I don't see that anything is now being achieved in this thread. It is time to close it. 

  On 09/09/2024 at 15:37, layzie said:

Make it stop.

If Demonlanders stop feeding the troll it stops. Astounds me every year they fall for this stuff.

GNF must be due soon to post some inside knowledge 

  On 09/09/2024 at 22:30, Demon Dynasty said:

This is where the MFC needs to get on the front foot and start slapping these [censored] for slander with an immediate law suit.

Not liking reporting doesn't make it libellous, unless your comfortable with the club acting as a vexatious litigant. 

  On 09/09/2024 at 22:35, old dee said:

I am not one who believes in over censorship however I don't see that anything is now being achieved in this thread. It is time to close it. 

The only time I basically post on this site at present Old Dee is in an effort to defend against mistruths being spread about our club both in the media and repeated on here. Close the thread down? Is there nothing being potentially achieved by arguing for facts? 

Why hasn’t the Players Association spoken up on the Joel Smith case?

  On 09/09/2024 at 22:42, Skuit said:

The only time I basically post on this site at present Old Dee is in an effort to defend against mistruths being spread about our club both in the media and repeated on here. Close the thread down? Is there nothing being potentially achieved by arguing for facts? 

This specific thread is honestly 90% of the time depressing. All doom and gloom.

If only all this had been stopped 4 weeks ago 😮‍💨

  On 09/09/2024 at 23:03, Dingo said:

Why hasn’t the Players Association spoken up on the Joel Smith case?

They only represent the top 5%

  On 09/09/2024 at 11:32, waynewussell said:

This highlights the hypocrisy and feigned outrage that shows like Footy Classified rely on to maintain the ratings! 

To the discussion about our media department : we need to run a shadow set of accounts which does nothing but lampoon the hypocrisy in the media like this example. Whilst being self deprecating.

 

Media Watch for the AFL media as it were. The more I think about it the more I like it. Paul Barry even lampooned himself last night in his homily to Tim Bowden (never more than now do we need a show like Backchat and Clarke/Dawe)

  On 09/09/2024 at 23:23, Clintosaurus said:

They only represent the top 5%

What about the mismanagement of concussed players by Port and Brisbane last year? All in the interest of not losing their A grade players during a match. Remember the Alir Alir situation?

have the afl players association actually made a public statement that they have started an investigation?

 

  On 09/09/2024 at 19:14, No10 said:

I usually like Caro honestly, I know that’s not a popular opinion here.

This all reads to me as fairly standard. Epworth is the closest and a highly rated hospital. He was then transferred to the Alfred for specialist care.

The biggest issue appears to be the emotional impact a phone call from the hospital to his girlfriend that alarmed her.

That seems to have escalated the emotional response tremendously. However, these calls are common and steer toward worst case. Ultimately, most people who have had this kind of experience understand that’s part of life and move on, for whatever reason that doesn’t seem to have been the case and the trauma increased.

I would also say, without any medical insight, that the fact he was given a full vaccination has to be considered as a known factor for the appendicitis that followed. Not sure that’s avoidable in the situation, but a shame those events happened so close together.

All players from MCG games get taken to the Epworth, and the full vaccination is standard for spleen lacerations.  This is totally about personalities and not process.  I had major surgery a few months ago and an organ removed (wanna see my 20cm scar, CP, and compare stories??).  Informed consent before all surgery requires a conversation about the probability of death during surgery.  Phone calls to next of kin when surgery is finished is standard process.  Glass half full vs glass half empty.  You choose your perspective.  

  On 09/09/2024 at 18:37, Skuit said:

That's just a whole lot of incoherent indignation. Wilson clearly doesn't know the full set of the facts, so is throwing out a load of rehashed questions that have either been previously addressed or don't relate to us. 

The miscommunication between the various health transport services? 

May as well pin that on the MFC as well. 

The misdiagnosis of Petracca’s injury?

Wilson's trying to make it sound like misdiagnosis equals malpractice, rather than an ordinary part of the diagnostic process where a medical practioner will come to an initial conclusion based on the information available at the time. 

The fact that he was taken to the Epworth hospital and waited there for hours?

The reason he was there for hours was because he was being treated, and then his vital indications changed. I think Wilson should be very careful here if she is trying to insinuate sub-standard care at Epworth.

Also, as another reminder, once the paramedics arrived, Petracca was no longer under the care of the MFC medical team, to the extent that we were also no longer privy to any new information. 

Why did he go to the Epworth?

I don't know enough about how the healthcare system works in Victoria to properly respond, but I'm guessing you can't just ask for a patient to be admitted to the emergency trauma ward as a precautionary measure without evidence of significant-enough trauma. I imagine you would be directed to another facility for further checks and monitoring. 

Why was not all the information given to the medicos correct?

This is potentially the most serious allegation. But does she mean we gave the paramedics information contrary to what we knew, or that his condition was not yet known, so 'not correct' in hindsight as to the true extent of his injury?  

There were two ambulances at the ground, but a third one was called?

Wilson raises this point before immediately clarifying that as per protocol the two other ambulances must remain at the ground to cater to the public. What is she even trying to get at? 

She seems to be hinting at something that went down between the various ambulance teams or dispatch. Maybe we assumed one of the ambulances on-site could take him, and as such were delayed in calling another so bear some responsibility if the policy was clear? Otherwise, it's not related to us at all.

If it transpires that anyone in a position of authority at the MFC encouraged Trac back out on the ground despite his own potential, evident, reluctance - then we should be in the gun, and perhaps it will shine a light on an industry-wide attitude. If not, we followed league protocols by all reports: if the protocols need to change, then Wilson can go after the AFL and stop using words like 'negligence' and 'wrongdoing' in relation to our football club thanks. 

Meanwhile, I would encourage the MFC to send her team a friendly reminder about defamation laws, and to be very, very careful about how she chooses her future words. 

 

 

 

Great post. 

The way Caro stumbled over what she was raising as “issues” is telling. She was asked where they would lead and had nothing to say. 

All that lies at the heart of her story is that Paul Marsh has just returned from 3 months leave of absence, which means he wasn’t here at KB, and so he’s now asking questions about what happened. That’s not entirely surprising. It doesn’t mean there are new issues, nor that they’re the club’s fault (or anyone’s).

Pretty sure that everything bad this club will experience over the next 6 months will come under the heading 'Christian Petracca' - for all of our sanity, it's time to close this thread down.  

  On 09/09/2024 at 22:39, BLWNBA said:

Not liking reporting doesn't make it libellous, unless your comfortable with the club acting as a vexatious litigant. 

This is true. 

However she went very close to alleging medical negligence by the club, AFL, ambos and/or hospitals. She even caught herself and said she wasn’t explicitly suggesting as much, which was a bit like trying to unring the bell.

  On 10/09/2024 at 00:02, titan_uranus said:

This is true. 

However she went very close to alleging medical negligence by the club, AFL, ambos and/or hospitals. She even caught herself and said she wasn’t explicitly suggesting as much, which was a bit like trying to unring the bell.

The thing with journos is that they have free pass to use innuendo, heresay and rumours to spread whatever controversy they want.

Any accountability from their part? 🤐

  On 10/09/2024 at 00:07, ElDiablo14 said:

The thing with journos is that they have free pass to use innuendo, heresay and rumours to spread whatever controversy they want.

Any accountability from their part? 🤐

No they don’t. They get sued all the time for defamation. 

  On 09/09/2024 at 23:23, Clintosaurus said:

They only represent the top 5%

...and certainly have no time for the 7% solution.

 

[Look it up]

  On 09/09/2024 at 21:24, Jaded No More said:

Every player who is taken to hospital from the MCG goes to the Epworth. It’s the closest private hospital. And of course players get taken to a private hospital so they can be seen to immediately. 
If the ambulance took him to the Alfred with nothing more than suspected broken ribs, he’d be in the waiting room for 4+ hours before anyone would even see him. At a level 1 trauma centre, broken ribs rate very low on the triage scale.

Also a reminder that Melbourne has no say in his care the minute he gets into an ambulance. 

Another reminder is May being sent directly to hospital after breaking his ribs the first time, because he indicated trouble breathing (due to the lung puncture he sustained).

If Trac at any point said he couldn’t breath, his pain was a 10, or he wasn’t willing to get back on the ground, does anyone really think we would have told him “well suck it up”? 
There is absolutely no evidence we would have done that. 

Us mortals go wherever we get taken and left on a trolley for hours. These overpaid AFL players need to harden up. Not the first person in the world who has face death. 

  On 09/09/2024 at 20:22, Skuit said:

Being an outsider, it's some of these things I'm unfamiliar with. It's a private hospital? Do we or the AFL have a contact with the hospital? If I were to fall off the monkey-bars in the playground just outside of the MCG, and my friends called emergency services and said I was in a fair bit of pain, what would be the response? Who comes to get me and take me where?

Are the ambulances from Epworth privately bidden? Are they networked in with the public system? Does dispatch ask if I have insurance, and then send me somewhere accordingly? What happens if my friends drive me to and drop me off at the Alfred? Is Caroline Wilson aware that you can't just go in for explorative surgery if a need for an operation hasn't yet been identified?

A few years ago my mother was visiting me in Amsterdam and was very suddenly in a lot of pain. I took her to the hospital and they told me to go find a doctor and get a referral first before rocking up to emergency. I held my ground and it ended up being an emergency, but I guess they were just following their own protocols. 

Is the healthcare system the same in Australia as the Netherlands? 

I’m not sure if there is an agreement between the AFL and Epworth about players going there as a matter of course (although doctors and physios wear Epworth branded clothing on game day). Ultimately the call would be by the paramedics if they felt he had injuries requiring care in a trauma centre but the main cause of issues here (the spleen injury) is not easily diagnosed without CT scanning (which can show both the injury and evidence that active bleeding is occurring). No referral is needed to go to an emergency department.
 

An analogy I would use here is having someone fall off a ladder at home and be taken to a local hospital where it is discovered the injuries are worse than realized and they are transferred to a bigger centre. Most tertiary centres in Melbourne would have capacity to perform embolization (causing the vessels to stop bleeding using a catheter in the atery) of a bleeding spleen after hours and this is probably the main reason he was transferred (he could have had his spleen removed at Epworth but would then have had a major surgery and need additional precautions to avoid infection in the future).  
 

Calling patients family members is an absolutely standard element of care after a procedure. This may have been scary for them to receive but to not call would have been poor in a communication sense. 

  On 10/09/2024 at 00:17, Timothy Reddan-A'Blew said:

...and certainly have no time for the 7% solution.

 

[Look it up]

I see you are a fan of the great detective Tim !