Great rant. Here’s a couple more…

Reliance on gambling sponsorship and revenue. Nothing corrupts a game more.
Victorian centric. This is the AFL, not the VFL. Get over yourselves and make it a truly national game.
The draw. Simply play each other once each, then remaining games determined by last years ladder position.
Racism and bullying. Never properly addressed or dealt with by very poor leadership.
Rule clarification you’ve covered, but consistency with the tribunal and penalties needs to be addressed.

Fair dinkum. Truth bomb coming.

In the last few years the AFL, Rugby and many other sports have discovered duty of care, although it’s been around since Donoghue v Stevenson (1932). Yet so many dinosaurs just don’t get it. Concussion in contact sports is brutal. It destroys careers, lives, families.

There are 2 current class actions, and there will probably be more individual actions. The AFL is going to pay many millions, and possibly billions, in the next 10 years for not doing enough to protect the head.

Peter Wright may be a good bloke and had no intention to harm, but what he did, what Brad Scott defended, and what many commentators are calling “part of the game” was negligent, brutal and unsustainable for ANY sport. 100kg plus jumping, bracing and hitting any unsuspecting player in the head with your shoulder, hip, elbow or any other hard part of your body at that speed and force is simply not on. Stop it!

Mourn it if you want, but if you want this game to exist in anything like it’s current format these actions have to stop. Soon there will be sendoff rules, lengthy suspensions for players and coaches etc etc.

The damage is simply too great, the risk too high, the cost to individuals and the sport too much. Actions like Peter’s, whatever his intention, however good a person he is, are not sustainable or defensible any more. They are acts of violence, whether intentional or not, and the monetary cost will force all sports to outlaw them totally.

And so they should.

Fair dinkum. Truth bomb coming.

In the last few years the AFL, Rugby and many other sports have discovered duty of care, although it’s been around since Donoghue v Stevenson (1932). Yet so many dinosaurs just don’t get it. Concussion in contact sports is brutal. It destroys careers, lives, families.

There are 2 current class actions, and there will probably be more individual actions. The AFL is going to pay many millions, and possibly billions, in the next 10 years for not doing enough to protect the head.

Peter Wright may be a good bloke and had no intention to harm, but what he did, what Brad Scott defended, and what many commentators are calling “part of the game” was negligent, brutal and unsustainable for ANY sport. 100kg plus jumping, bracing and hitting any unsuspecting player in the head with your shoulder, hip, elbow or any other hard part of your body at that speed and force is simply not on. Stop it!

Mourn it if you want, but if you want this game to exist in anything like it’s current format these actions have to stop. Soon there will be sendoff rules, lengthy suspensions for players and coaches etc etc.

The damage is simply too great, the risk too high, the cost to individuals and the sport too much. Actions like Peter’s, whatever his intention, however good a person he is, are not sustainable or defensible any more. They are acts of violence, whether intentional or not, and the monetary cost will force all sports to outlaw them totally.

And so they should.

Gotta love Victoria bleating about inequality

Love your work Tim. One of the best media analysts in the game. A quibble about players taking flak though – there has never been an all-time champion in AFL who received more flak than Adam Goodes. Literally forced him out of the game and he has never returned.

Keep up the good work.

Dill comes out and blames the umpire but says the system works. Wrong.

The “system” is that every goal is reviewed, because there is a 60 second break to do so.
The “system” is that we want to play fast so a kick in can be taken immediately after the umpire waves his single flag for a point. It took 10 seconds. Sydney took advantage, moved the ball downfield with 3 uncontested marks, then to a contest, game over.

The umpire probably made a mistake, but that system is inherently flawed.

If there is any doubt, hold play up until a review takes place. Simple. Umpires will always make mistakes – part of the game with all of the discretionary rules – but if you truly want to improve the system, slow it down where there is any doubt.
Won’t happen atm so get on with it, but maybe stop blaming umps who are human, and start blaming the people who devised the system.

A legend who ignited the crowd and his teammates like nobody else. Always watchable, an amazing athlete, graceful and cat-like, the best mover in the game. A monstrous left foot, with many flaws that just made him more loveable – couldn’t kick with his right, never a one-grab player. Unselfish, a great clubman and with many more goal assists than Plugger, Dunstall or Ablett Snr ever had, in an era when he was often double- or triple- teamed.
His roar of “It’s On!” after his third goal against Geelong in round 2 last year will echo down the years, and to be there to see that, to run out on that field with my kids, is probably my greatest football memory, better even than Nick Davis in 2005. Absolutely electric! And it went global!
And such a humble introvert, immensely hurt as an indigenous player by the treatment of Goodes in 2015, always competitive and a hard trainer, and the ultimate showman selling the game in enemy territory.
Thanks for the memories Bud, both for Hawthorn and Sydney, and best of luck with your future on the Gold Coast. Come back often. You are Simply the Best!

Love it Don, you provocateur!

But what else can they try? They got smashed in the midfield. Personally I see them finishing on 40 or 44 at best, not enough to make finals. Roll the dice with Heeney. Nothing to lose this year.

Happy to amend it if you don’t like the first line. Swans fans remember. Prominent Sydney Swans full-forward Lance “Buddy” Franklin missed the finals series due to mental health problems. (Wikipedia)

If you don’t think that racism plays a part in this then you are either a racist or a moron. “Prominent Sydney Swans full-forward Lance “Buddy” Franklin missed the finals series due to mental health problems.” Wikipedia.

Swans fans remember. The racism and bullying of Goodes in 2014/2015 led directly to Buddy missing the finals in 2015. The whole team was affected. And here it rears it’s ugly head again. Fans have long memories – they remember how it affected Goodes, Buddy and the Swans 8 years ago, and here the Collingwood “faithful” go again.

Buddy is in the twilight of his career. Booing, however pantomime in its beginnings, will continue if the “fans” perceive that it affects players and teams. It is bullying, and there is a real undercurrent of racist bullying in AFL fandom.

Stand up against it or quite quickly another indigenous great of our game will spend his final year as Goodes did, with only the support of the Swans and his teammates, facing incessant, irrational, mob-mentality “get over it humour”, and ultimately bereft and betrayed by the game that he loved.

That social media post by the Giants is simply the best! A gem!

As a Swans supporter that was a game they never should have lost. Mentally fragile atm, and the Giants toughed it out. Well done to them.

Geez it would be good for the game if he did. He is a gun, immensely skilled, quick, powerful, unselfish and with a great footy brain. He can almost singlehandedly change a game and take Geelong with him. Wish he was in my team. And if he does how refreshing would that be? Still, it is a long season.

Nice article. “Lyon is the Medici” ranks right up there with the best/ worst analogies I’ve ever read. I enjoy your intelligent writing and deem you worthy, for the foreseeable future.

Don’t do a Dutton on me.

Great article. Well argued. The true test is whether it is a “non-football” act. All of them should be banned. But the dinosaurs don’t see it, and the AFL will pay millions because of their failure to deal with what is such an obvious problem by properly and effectively banning the bump and “non-football” contact. They are truly a head-in-the-sand organisation when it comes to reading the room, who similarly didn’t deal with the overt racism/ bullying to Adam Goodes in 2014/15, and still haven’t to this day.

Maybe it’s an old white man problem, says this old white man.

Sorry, Cameron, but the bump is dead, just as the clean out in rugby union, competitive scrums, and so on. Contact sports which allow head hits in any form, accidental or otherwise, will change their rules to avoid litigation. They have no alternative. There are simply too many people suffering concussions and the long term effects of concussions.
You may mourn the death of the bump, but it will be ruled out of the game very shortly. Protecting the head in order to avoid litigation will simply be the norm in all contact sports.

Karl Popper, a humanist philosopher, described the paradox of tolerance – if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. The seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

There’s the nub of it. Most religions are intolerant (but not all). Most sports are tolerant, as you rightly describe Rugby. It is self-contradictory, but important nonetheless.

Congratulations Yatzz and all Geelong supporters. Class act, class people. Smashed us from the first bounce and played out of your skin. I am still so flat after that game, and what seemed to be a lack of effort. From being the number one pressure team to folding like a house of cards is difficult to accept.
But they will be back.
As to Dazzler’s comment, the Swans played almost a perfect game on a perfect day to beat you in round 2. Blaming the umps for that loss is worse than the Swans supporters blaming the umps for 2016. At least they had a case.
Well done, congratulations and enjoy basking in the sunlight. Keep writing good stuff Yatzz – enjoyable reading from the other side!

100% correct Cat. Geelong were well prepared and their pressure caused the same doubt in Sydney’s heads that Collingwood caused the week before. Everything worked for the Cats, particularly their centre clearance goals after Sydney responded. Swans deflated like a souffle and were quite horrible. Fox and Warner deserve mentions for their fight, but rest were shell shocked, rabbits in the headlight stuff.

Great coaching by Scott and his team, and great execution by the Cats. Superb win, but unfortunately a forgettable GF for most neutrals, as all blowouts are.

And even as a diehard Swans supporter, I have real doubts that they can replicate this year again. Probably bottom of the eight next year, sadly, as there are some really good teams coming up. We will see.

Ask Hawthorn – they commissioned it and it was handed to them 3 weeks ago. The media did their job.

Hi Angela. There are several factors at work – racism, corporate greed, a win at all cost mentality, a patronising colonial approach (we know what’s better for you people), and a total lack of leadership by the AFL. Similar to Adam Goodes, where they allowed it to go on for too long. It seems to be a part of AFL culture, and it will almost undoubtedly apply to every club.They pay lip service to the welfare of indigenous players.

And NOBODY is saying that Fagan, Clarkson, Burt, etc should not get a fair hearing.

But we need to listen and believe the victims of this racism before we make changes.

As I said elsewhere…

It’s not just Hawthorn and Collingwood, it’s the whole stinking leadership of the corporate AFL, ignoring issues of race, cultural identity, bullying, and the importance of family in their pursuit of the dollar. Winning is everything.
Like the Papacy, the leadership of the AFL makes insane amounts of money and moves people around while sweeping such issues under the carpet. They are in bed with corporate pirates, particularly gambling and crypto. Watch their paid apologists, particularly the Murdoch press, come out in the media stirring the trolls to victim blame these individuals and families who have suffered so much.
I love this game but the win at all cost mentality combined with the pursuit of lucre has led to a culture without any ethical or moral compass on these issues of race, cultural identity, bullying and the importance of family.
Great TV deal though.

It’s not just Hawthorn and Collingwood, it’s the whole stinking leadership of the corporate AFL, ignoring issues of race, cultural identity, bullying, and the importance of family in their pursuit of the dollar. Winning is everything.
Like the Papacy, the leadership of the AFL makes insane amounts of money and moves people around while sweeping such issues under the carpet. They are in bed with corporate pirates, particularly gambling and crypto. Watch their paid apologists, particularly the Murdoch press, come out in the media stirring the trolls to victim blame these individuals and families who have suffered so much.
I love this game but the win at all cost mentality combined with the pursuit of lucre has led to a culture without any ethical or moral compass on these issues of race, cultural identity, bullying and the importance of family.
Great TV deal though.

Should be a good GF. Pressure by the kids, the exuberance of youth, versus the old and proven warriors, with a new system and some excellent recruits. Head says Geelong, heart says the Swans.

Swans need to build a good lead, but without Sammy Reid it may be hard. Still, MacLean is a good clunker, We will be thereabouts!

Go the Bloods!

Hmmmm. Sorry Tim, but I think that you missed the major factor which changed the game – Sam Reid’s injury halfway through the second quarter. He had one goal and six score involvements in the first and was close to BOG. His work in the forward line was sorely missed, and the Swans were even forced to play Heaney, Mills and Gulden in the ruck. He won’t make the GF, and after a fantastic year, his absence will hurt Sydney. Yes, Cox came off a little later, but he was nowhere near as influential as Sam.

Full credit to the Pies. They played without fear after 1/2 time and almost ran down the nervous Swans. A great team to watch and support this year.