sue

The Chairman seems to act in the role of a judge. This is a case which would be thrown out by the judge and the jury directed to acquit.

Although it is an adversarial system, it's not clear that he gets the benefit of the doubt, is it?

I didn't realise the tribunal was run on the adversarial system. Totally inappropriate in my view.

yeah, spin and then you would have no idea what hit you. His point is so stupid he could be cunningly arguing for the defence.

Looking at the AFL 'live feed' Exactly what I was thinking. Why is the AFL set up as a prosecutor. Surely that is not appropriate. The panel should be just trying to discover the truth.

Thought some might be interested in this article from an obscure source: http://thenewdaily.com.au/sport/2014/05/05/race-afls-wooden-spoon-heating/

Forget the physics. The main difference is that players are moving faster as muscles etc are improved in the gym (and maybe leg and arm bone is strengthening at the same time). Whereas nothing has been done to make jaw bones harder. Maybe players should be on a diet which requires a lot of hard chewing.

sorry jnrmac, but maschy did go into a tiny bit more detail....

I just used the FVD media extension (for chrome or firefox) to download the vision currently on the AFL site. Then I used vlc to play the video at a very slow speed. I revise my earlier reading of the play. Viney was originally going for the ball, when he saw Lynch would get there first he changed direction and slowed substantially to protect himself. His shoulder came nowhere near Lynch's head, it clearly hit Lynch's left shoulder. The jaw must have been broken on Georgio or later. If he gets done for that then players should get done when any injury happens after a legal bump no matter what the circumstances. That would be ridiculous, but this is the AFL.....

I think our best hope is to argue that the initial bump was totally legit (assuming there was no head-shoulder contact) and a player can't be responsible for the unexpected, namely the presence, position and timing of Georgio's head. Do you get rubbed out if after a perfectly legitimate bump, the bumpee's head hits the ground and breaks something? If not, then why should you get rubbed out if he hits a moving target? Trouble is, the AFL's answer to the first question is probably 'yes'.

Sadly I don't see that he was going for the ball. He was going to bump and then pulled up which may help him a little, but he still bumped. Some seem sure as to what broke the jaw - not sure myself. But the tribunal may not care - they'll say he wouldn't have broken his jaw if there was no bump. As to the outcome depending on the injury, it's the same with the law. If I push you and you break an arm, I get done for assault or GBH. If instead you hit your head and die I'm in more trouble. Don't like this myself, but that seems the way of the world. Let's hope the MFC can tell a better story than any I've read here.

thanks for the explanation Maschy. Another thing for umps to deal with is how far out can you be and still ask for your 30 seconds. With 30 seconds to go I can imagine a player with his team 1 point up and 65 meters out saying he is going to have a shot even if he regularly has trouble kicking 40 metres. Whereas another player may have a good chance. We can't have the umps deciding how long kick a player 'usually' is.

Surely tackling the tackler is already illegal if an oppo player tackles the tackler. Just needs to be enforced. Will quickly reduce ball-ups and make decisions easier. It is more of a problem what you do about tackling the tackler by a tackler's team-mate just to cause a large pile of players and hold it up. I'd hesitate to make a new rule but maybe it is needed. But first try enforcing the current law - you can't tackle a bloke who doesn't have the ball. Another thing which irks me is the variable amount of time before the ump calls for a ball up. There were instances on the weekend of umps waiting until 5 players had piled on and rolled about and other cases where there are only 2 guys, the player is brought to ground with the ball underneath and the ump immediately calls for a ball up without waiting to see if the player makes a genuine attempt to get rid of it regardless of prior opportunity. What are they thinking? I've been grumbling for a long time by the convulsive acting players who can't possibly get the ball out have to do to con an ump. Now that this jerking about has become a sign of genuine effort, we will soon see blokes acting as if 1000 volts is going through them even when they can get the ball out but don't want to.

But it's not very difficult either. Except if you become a journalist. Then you start using 'impact' instead to ensure you don't wrongly use effect when you should have said affect and vice versa. And the result is that now we have no word which means impact. One will doubtless emerge. Language changes, but you would hope that changes from misuse would arise from sources other than professional writers. Sorry off topic....

Thanks, that explains it. But why is the rule as it is? I can imagine that in days of yore putting it down was a way to waste time, but if there is time limit now, what does it matter what you do with it during that time?

In the article about Jamar on the MFC site he says: “Dunny (Lynden Dunn) came over to me and said ‘take your full 30 seconds and kick a snap’. So I said ‘no worries’ and took my time. I didn’t put the ball on the ground and I tried to drain the clock a bit." I'm obviously losing touch with the rules - what's wrong with putting the ball on the ground? Surely 30 seconds is 30 seconds whether or not you stand on your head while juggling the ball with your feet and singing God Save the Queen? If there is a rule against it, what if you wanted to do a place kick?

That sort of thinking could get you banned from demonland DA.

Nothing to do with human nature. The umps are umpiring a professional game - they should not be influenced. Of course they will occasionally make mistakes, and statistics says that sometimes they will randomly make those mistakes in one direction that appears biased from time to time. But yesterday they were deplorable for whatever reason. Why not grump about it now? If we whined after a loss, I can just imagine your response. If's do change things. If we were a top club and complained we'd have this sort of cr@p less often.

Just because a policy has been consistently applied doesn't make it right. And it's not irrelevant - what if we wanted to upgrade Harmes & King for some reason.

I put it down to Sheedy seeking revenge on Melbourne. While as SylviaSaint says, $cully showed some promise, there is no way he was worth as much as they paid even if you didn't take into account all the reservations SS points to. Sheedy was out to make a statement and forgot the maxim that it is better to say nothing and be thought a fool etc.

Well said Deanox. But you'll never convince those who wallow in being as negative as possible.

If a retired player isn't equivalent to a LTI in the eyes of the AFL they need an urgent trip to the ophthalmologist. Clearly the list is then 1 short. If anything the club should be able to recruit an extra player or rookie from somewhere if they wish and can find someone suitable.

Obviously the coach thinks otherwise.

Looked a bit lackadaisical or 'laconic' while doing some of that good work.

Agree that Hogan's injury is a serious worry, but worrying right now about his contract status is going overboard. My remark wasn't directed specifically at you. But I believe any objective reader of the stream of doom and gloom posts on this board would be in no doubt that many are overreacting to the pain of recent years and have thrown realism out the window as they wring every last ounce of despair out of every thing that goes wrong. I guess it must be therapeutic to do so.