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We’ve all seen the footage of John Bourke, the Collingwood reserves player who kicked an opponent in the groin, then shoved an umpire to the ground, belted a runner, then jumped the fence and attacked a Swans fan.
Bourke’s nadir has featured in a thousand low-light reels and earned him a ban of ten years plus 16 games (later reduced to seven years, but the only bloke who could have come back after that was Paul Salmon).
It was one of those extraordinary brain snaps that comes along once in a generation (in a given code), on par with Angel Matos kicking a Taekwondo referee in the face at the 2008 Olympics – thus demonstrating that he had, in fact, recovered from a broken toe in time to avoid disqualification.
» SEND-OFF RULE IS SIMPLY NOT REQUIRED
The interesting thing is that Bourke was taken off by his own club, at considerable personal cost to the runner who copped one in the face. Had the Pies reserves coach decided, in a moment of unfathomable madness, to leave Bourke on the field – the umpire, once he got up, would have had no formal power to eject the offending player, unless he ran a message reporting the assault to the two cops who’d drawn the long straw that day at the station and got to go to the footy.
The greatest sport on earth is a hotly contested title, given the existence of hurling and ice hockey, but one that has been held by Aussie rules since Wills and Harrison. Is the absence of a send-off rule the game’s one flaw? The upside is a strong deterrent. The downside is a mistaken send-off would be disastrous.
Since Bourke’s bad day at the office, the number of incidents that could have potentially warranted a send-off has been small.
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Despite the death penalty having been abolished in New South Wales for 39 years, Tony Lockett publicly executed Peter Caven at the SCG in 1994. The flying 110kg elbow directed at the Swan’s face put him out of action for 12 weeks. Lockett continued playing that day, slotting 11 goals as the Saints came from 51 points down early in the last term to snatch an extraordinary win.
Clearly the course of the game was radically changed. Lockett got eight weeks. Neither side came close to making the finals.
At least Caven’s face had been somewhere near the ball when Lockett destroyed it. In 2008 Cameron Ling had well and truly got the handball away when Dean Solomon threw up the elbow, taking Geelong’s best tagger out of the game. At that point in the first term the Cats and Dockers were level.
It looked like a cold, calculated move, amidst a general physical siege by the mediocre Dockers against the reigning premiers, who were 13-1 going into the game. Freo coach Mark Harvey would later boast his side had made the Cats “vulnerable” in the first term of a game the Dockers went on to lose by 74 points. Solomon’s attempt to change the result had fallen flat. He also got an eight-week ban.
‘Saint’ Steven Baker laid siege to Steve Johnson in 2010, striking the dangerous forward a number of times and even trying to hit his strapped, injured finger. The deliberate nature of the offences were so blatant the tribunal gave Baker a nine-week rest from the game.
And of course, there was the tragi-comic end of Alistair Lynch, who in the 2004 grand final threw a number of ragged haymakers at Darryl Wakelin. Lynch was 36 and had done a quaddy early in the game.
After Lynch’s copped a ten-week ban, the league moved to double penalties incurred in a grand final. The logic was solid but there was one fundamental flaw – if a player knows they are playing their last game, a 20-week ban is as meaningless as a ten-week ban. A player could still plan, as Solomon and Baker so clearly did, to take a particular opponent out of the equation, then continue to play the rest of the match and retire with a premiership medal arising from their contribution.
In 2009 a retiring Saint could have belted Harry Taylor early and changed the course of history. Indeed, a number of ghastly hypotheticals are thrown up by the incidence of retiring players in close grand finals. WAFL coach Mal Brown certainly deployed the tactic at least once.
Is it then reasonable to suggest a send-off rule be introduced, only for grand finals and only in the most extreme cases?
We are fortunate that the sort of thing that would warrant a send-off has been remarkably rare in the grand finals of our great game. Yes, grand finals are hard, but a generally hard within limits. For example, Mark Yeates targeted Dermott Brereton in the opening seconds of the 1989 grand final, but it was fair shirtfront (without a raised arm or head-high contact), despite the broken ribs.
Retiring players are loathe to end on a low note, and coaches reluctant to ask such a thing of them. So far, a sense of honour and fair play has protected VFL/AFL grand finals (apart from 1945) from any particularly heinous violence. Until that changes, a send-off rule is not warranted.
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