Very Jaded

I think it’s a safe bet the crowd will be at least 50/50 if not favoring Melbourne. Hawks fans can’t be keen to come watch their side at the moment.

Anyone know what time the case is being heard tonight? And can I tune in with a pitchfork at the ready?

The fact that being a MEDIUM forward Fritsch is as consistent as he is, tells you what a gun he is. Anyone suggesting he isn't in the top echelon of forwards in the AFL is drunk.

I’m glad I was wrong. I think there was a lot of public pressure on the club to appeal.

Anderson and Rowell were definitely the two most dominant players on the ground. Only fair they got votes. Anderson ripped us apart. Lol at Ballard getting votes. Cheeky.

We don’t need to use the Cripps incident. It’s completely irrelevant. Show last week’s vision of Fogarty and Lynch earlier in the year.

Yep. Parents should just let their kids stare at screens and vape instead. And never ever let them in a moving vehicle.

If you are concerned about your kid getting hurt, then don't let them play AFL. It is as simple as that. Injuries will never be avoided in a contact sport, it does not matter what we do.

The last line in the article from the website regarding the appeal is good... I assume GC will send in a medical report to back this up "The club has reached out to the Gold Coast Suns, and pleasingly Ballard has recovered well and is expected to play this week."

Except the outcome wasn't even a problem here, as Ballard suffered neither a neck injury nor a concussion in the end. We are now punishing players because a doctor made a call to get a stretcher on the ground out of an abundance of caution?

I assume we are trying to put a case together first. That will take a little bit of time. I have no idea when the cut off is to accept or challenge but I suspect it’s today as the tribunal will likely sit tomorrow or Wednesday.

If we don’t appeal this, it will be the first time in many many years that I will be deeply disappointed with the club. We haven’t put a foot wrong IMO in a long time. I was very happy to accept the Kosi penalty, but if we don’t defend a kid who plays the game with good intent and bravery, I would be incredibly upset. JVR deserves better and if we accept this suspension we are telling him 6 games in, that he has to spend the rest of his career second guessing if he should attack the contest or not. I would hate to lose that side of his game because it is a big part of what makes him so special.

Absolutely this. His duty of care was to look at Ballard once he committed to the spoil to assess where both the player and the ball were likely to land. If he blindly goes for the spoil both players could have clashed heads and both would have ended up with bad concussions. How the [censored] is this a better result than JVR taking a split second to look at Ballard to ensure his own safety, as well as the safety of his opponent? We really think Foggerty has no peripheral vision and didn't know he was about to hit a Collingwood player when he went for that spoil last week? This notion of eyes for the ball is frankly idiotic. JVR didn't line him up off the ball. And honestly if that was Lever or May executing the spoil, their fist would have likely connected perfectly and nobody would even speak of it. But a 6 game forward who is a big boy goes for it and stuffs up, and he deserves 2 weeks off.

Ross Lyon is who we are taking advice from now? Fritta is not getting dropped ffs.

JVR is obviously expected, in the split second that he has to spoil a high ball, to take out a calculator and calculate the exact timing and angle at which he is to hit the ball in order to avoid touching his opponent while also ensuring his fist hits the ball directly into the hands of Kosi who then goes on to kick a banana from the pocket 🙄 Quite honestly the AFL is absolutely cooked.

As I said, optics. AFL house= stretcher very bad, broken nose we can’t get sued for. If Ballard doesn’t cop an earlier knock to the head (accidental), would he have even ended up on a stretcher? Where was the duty of care prior to this incident?

What if he looked at Ballard to assess his positioning to avoid a head clash or protecting his own body? He didn’t line him up off the ball ffs. He made a split second decision to try and impact the contest. If he doesn’t do that he gets called soft.

Last week this is called play on. We are not about protecting the head, we are about protecting the optics. One player is unharmed. One player is off on a stretcher. One player doesn’t even get looked at. One player cops 2 weeks.

It is beyond me why coaches and players aren’t allowed to make comments relating to the MRO but the media is able to judge and convict players. They are judge, jury and executioner. They should not be allowed to comment on this anymore than they would be allowed to comment on legal proceedings.

David King is still crying about what we did to Norf last week. Sad man.

1000%. If Ballard gets up and plays the game out this is not even a 50m penalty. Suns have confirmed Ballard is fine anyway. He felt something in the back of the neck (which is odd since JVR made contact with his face), and so a stretcher had to be called. It’s standard practice for all suspected neck injuries.

I was totally fine with Kosi getting two weeks. His was not a necessary footy action or even in play and had the potential to cause a very serious injury. The reality is tho, that basically every action on a footy field can cause serious injury. A spoil, a diving mark, a tackle, a speccy. If we start penalizing every action that ends in injury, whether accidental or not, whether in play or not, we are changing our game. We have to minimize risk by taking out actions that don’t contribute to the game. But we can never take the risk away from the game, and if you can’t even spoil a ball with the game on the line, then what can you even do? If Rivers dives for a spoil and the player chasing him accidentally trips over him and hits his head on the ground does Rivers get suspended? What if you go to spoil and break someone’s leg? Does Lever get suspended because he went for a spoil and his opponent landed badly and broke his leg? A split second in play decision to try and spoil cannot and should not result in suspension when 9 times out of 10 it won’t even result in a free kick. Just because Ballard felt something in his neck and a stretcher was called as a precaution, doesn’t mean JVR now has to miss two weeks of football. The AFL, as per usual, have taken it so far the other way, for fear of being sued, they are changing the game. For the worse.

And of course Chol isn’t even cited for a round house smack to Bowey’s head because Bowey had the nerve to get straight back up.

Exactly. We’ve copped some absolute putrid decisions and never appealed in recent years. ANB, Chandler, the list goes on of Melbourne players being made an example of. Sick of it.

We won’t challenge. We never do. But we absolutely should. A complete disgrace.