chookrat

Does anyone know how long we have to decide whether to challenge Hunter's suspension? Based on our clubs home page we have not yet indicated whether we will accept or challenge.

The club statement on the suspension has left the door open for us to challenge. I suspect the club will look at Hunter's action, whether he elected to bump, and weigh up an appeal based on their odds of a successful challenge. My take is it's pretty line ball whether Hunter bumped, braced or turned sideways to protect himself and gather the ball in the same motion. Players are allowed to brace or protect themselves when gathering the ball but if they elect to bump then they are in trouble.

The 29% bodes well for our next generation of supporters as in 25 years many of these will multiply. One thing for sure is its a good time to be a Melbourne supporter, we go into every game believing we are a good chance to win, play a good brand of football, generally get the result and are always in premiership contention.

For what it's worth I don't think Christian loses much sleep when the Tribunal or Appeals Board override his decisions. One does not become the Match Review Officer by caring about what others think. Agree with your second point. In this instance Rozee was out of control and owes himself a duty of care.

At the risk of quoting myself from an earlier post, here is what Sonia Hood from North Melbourne said at a function today and I think she perfectly captures the situation. “There are two parts to the Hawthorn situation: there are some shocking and substantive allegations in the public domain, which I won’t repeat but which relate to terminations of pregnancy and separations of families,” Hood said. “Those are contestable and are strongly denied, and a process was put in place eight months ago to determine whether they happened. I’ll leave what happens next to that process. “But more than that, there is clearly a huge amount of hurt on both sides. And an adversarial system and an adversarial process does not deal well with hurt." “It deals with right and wrong and punishment, not hurt, not learning and not the sort of understanding of one another and moving forward we need to get to if we’re going to have any chance of moving on.” “We need to find a way to build bridges, not battle lines”. Hawthorn embarked on a truth telling process of which its contents were leaked to the media and was then used as the basis as an AFL investigation involving lawyers and sanctions.

The footage makes it look like Hunter was moving towards the ball because the camera is following Rozee. If you follow Hunter relative to the signage painted on the ground he is practically stationary and all he does is turns his body and picks up the ball. Shouldn't have even been a free against in my view.

Hunter was practically stationary and in the same motion he turned his body he picked the ball up - there was no separate bump and collect action. It probably shouldn't have even been a free kick as you're allowed to pick the ball up whether another player is contesting or not. The action that would be more worthy of a 1-2 week suspension is Viney's slide which is quite a dangerous action.

Noone watching the game would have thought there was any chance Hunter would mark that ball.

The report should have been confidential along with the investigation that is currently underway. A part of me wonders whether Kennett initiated the report as a way of diminishing Clarkson's legacy to enhance his own, as there is no way as President you initiate such a review without having an idea of the sort of issues it will uncover.

Agree fully, since Brad Scott left the players have had virtually no stability with multiple senior coaches as well as overhauls of the footy department and executive. I feel for Clarkson in this as while the truth telling is important as a society we are too quick to condemn people including the people who chose to tell their story along with the coaches involved. I hope we see Clarkson back at North and that he can continue to contribute to the game.

Harmes is a true clubman and Melbourne person who has ridden the lows and highs and been really important for the team, culture and supporters. This said with our list profile I think it will benefit both parties if Harmes can find a 2 - 3 year deal with another club that needs an experienced midfielder either to provide cover for a young midfield or as depth for another contender. Also he's at 147 games and I'd be all for him having the opportunity to reach 150 if he does want to pursue his career at another club.

Ankle roll in the Sicily tackle. Spoke to Ben Dixon after the game and seemed ok. Should be good to go next week.

The AFL would say that Brad's conduct reflects poorly on the AFL, to which Brad could include a second envelope stating that the AFL's conduct reflects poorly on the AFL.

Maybe Brad green should send another tweet, help hurry things along.

If the suspension is upheld I hope that Tom MacDonald wears a Van Rooyen mask while he plays.

Does anyone know whether Van Rooyen is allowed to play if they are still deliberating come the opening bounce on Saturday?

I think the issue is his use of the facepalm followed by this is ridiculous. I wonder if the AFL will withdraw the please explain should the Appeals Board find that the 2 week suspension is in fact ridiculous.

Is it possible the Appeals Board decided it was all to difficult and snuck out the back way.

Does anyone know when the suspension is withdrawn does the AFL pay costs?

I suspect the high impact grading would not likely change due to the potential for serious injury and that a downgrade to medium would still mean a 1 week sanction. We are quite right to argue that the rough conduct provisions do not apply to a legitimate spoil which is protected as per rule 18.3. This defense is clever in that if the AFL uphold the suspension then they are also saying a player could face suspension for marking the ball if he doesn't take reasonable care.

It is really interesting that generally the grey area re suspensions comes down to how rules are interpreted while the JVR case seems to challenge the rules themselves where the tribunal accepts that JVR was only trying to spoil the ball, which is allowed, but because the spoil was reasonably foreseeable to cause harm they are treating it as a strike which falls under rough conduct. The rough conduct provisions specifically cater for bumps (which are deemed a football act that must be executed correctly) and strikes (not a football act) but do not address the need to perform spoils with any degree of care. I'm wondering if we will see a specific provision for spoils to be added under the rough conduct provisions at seasons end. The Lynch and Fogarty cases are particularly relevant and it is difficult for the AFL to apply its flimsy reasonably foreseeable argument to JVR, which opens a can of worms in that it could be applied to any action on the field, without explaining at the same time why the Lynch and Fogarty incidents were not reasonably foreseeable. Also because the AFL specifically looked at the Fogarty incident and that it was a mistake not to award a free, they must have also decided not to report it from an MRP perspective only 3 weeks ago. It is an even flimsier argument that the interpretation has changed in the past week especially given the lack of communication and training to clubs. There is a strong argument that clear communication, training and education are much more effective tools to prevent incidents than waiting for things to go wrong and then sanction employees with vague interpretation changes from week to week.

Does anybody know if the club has managed to track down this so called reasonable person the Tribunal keep referring to. I have a feeling that if we can find him/her they might be able to clear up this matter rather quickly.

Prior to this was the Trengove sling tackle on Dangerfield but at the time we were very much irrelevant so no-one really cared. Dangerfield miraculously recovered from his concussion and was best on ground the following week. The Viney brace was legendary.

I have it on good authority that the appeals board comprise Sportsbet executives and litigation experts. The real test will be when they hear a case involving head contact, concussion and brownlow contender. I suspect the litigators will fall on behind sportsbet.

Interestingly Carlton also used an incident as evidence involving the same Charlie Ballard as the JVR incident.