Why didn't good bloke references get Houli off the hook?

Ah, what a shame. What a terrible shame, that Bachar Houli’s brave attempt to pioneer the tactical use of character references at the AFL tribunal should have been nipped in the bud on appeal.

After all the effort his legal team, Waleed Aly, and the prime minister went to to convince the tribunal that Houli is indeed a fine upstanding fellow who never saw a cat he wouldn’t brake for, it seems a dreadful waste that the man in question now has to serve a four-week suspension for no other reason than the fact that this is the officially prescribed penalty for the offence he was charged with.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and if we are to be so pettily legalistic in applying the “rules” in the “manner intended”, we risk losing some of the glorious poetry of the tribunal. That is, the wonderful unpredictability that was at the heart of football’s judicial system when it was established.

Back then the tribunal had none of the fancy trappings of today. It was simply an old man standing on a tree stump throwing cans of beans at any player suspected of shaving his chest. But in a way, it was more in tune with the spirit of the game.

For why, indeed, should the tribunal not take into account a player’s character when handing down its judgment? If a man spends his life serving the community in a selfless manner, gives generously of his time and money to charity, and makes many many people happy simply by his presence, isn’t that more important than who he may or may not have punched, or where he may or may not have stuck his knee?

It’s ridiculous to tell the tribunal they must consider a stray elbow of utmost importance, but not to give even a minute’s thought to how many fun runs the owner of the elbow has done.

For who truly deserves a four-week suspension: the player who whacks another across the chops, or the player who skipped the visit to the children’s hospital to play laser tag? It’s a perversely narrow point of view that says the sole determinant of suspension should be events on the field.

It’s like voting for a prime minister based only on what he’s said in question time, without taking into account how well he tips for a lap dance.

Consider Barry Hall. He got seven weeks for his famous punch to Brent Staker’s face. Reasonably so, many people believed. But if the tribunal had been able to look into the future, and see the way Big Barry bonded with Chrissie and Joel in the jungle, they would have been sorely tempted to knock a few weeks off in recognition of the fact that Player Hall has a beautiful soul.

And what would be wrong with that? Don’t we want to reward good behaviour? Or are we just fixated on punishing the bad? Do we suffer, as a society, from the mentality that wrongdoers are beyond redemption?

Do we think that a few seconds’ “rough play” is the measure of what a man deserves? If you had a friend who had cured cancer, would you refuse to congratulate him because you heard he once tripped Bob Murphy? Then why, if you see Bob Murphy get tripped, would you insist on the tripper being suspended whether he’d cured cancer or not?

And to those of you who say this is a ridiculous comparison because footballers aren’t going to cure cancer, I say simply: wait until the Dockers have published their research.

So I say yes, give Bachar Houli his discount. In fact, he’s such a good bloke, I think he should be immune from suspension entirely. If anything, his community work so effectively offsets his sins, the number of weeks he gets for any offence should be in the negative: every time he’s charged by the MRP, he should be able to nominate another player he’d like to see get a couple of weeks.

I say bring a little commonsense and compassion to the AFL, and make this change immediately: from now on, no player to be judged by the tribunal without due consideration of how likeable he is. That’s right: it’s time to take the Luke Hodge Rule nationwide.