Unfortunately, the tough and rugged Steven Mays of the football world are being legislated from the game | Graham Cornes

With the steady erosion of the manly qualities in football, this is no longer the game we loved and were taught to play, writes Graham Cornes.

Every AFL team needs a Steven May – a fearless defender who is prepared to run straight and hard at the ball. It matters not who is coming in the other direction.

He is a player who stands under the ball as the pack is descending upon him. He is the player that consistently takes the intercept mark that thwarts opposition attacks; the player who spoils vigorously. And he is the player who puts doubt in an opponent’s mind. Just a little bit of doubt – enough to give a split-second advantage.

Opponents won’t admit it but there is an element of fear also. He’s big, strong and ferocious – even to some of his teammates. Any team would love to have him. Every team needs a player like him – or used to!

The Steven May types of AFL are being legislated from the game. Photo by Morgan Hancock.

Unfortunately, the Steven Mays of the football world are being legislated from the game.

The three-game ban that he was handed for his collision with Carlton’s Frankie Evans is as perplexing as it is frustrating. This is no longer the game we loved and were taught to play.

This is not an endorsement of football thuggery, more a condemnation of the steady erosion of the manly qualities – yes, I used the term manly – that helped make AFL football the greatest team sport in the world.

Yes, the game has changed, but it is not living in the past to lament the deterioration of the sport’s masculinity.

The football thugs are long gone from the game. Occasionally a player transgresses the bounds of sportsmanship and self-control but it is extremely rare. Most reports, even those cases that are referred directly to the tribunal, are football accidents or momentary brain fades.

But this case of Steven May’s is different. He had every right to contest a ball that was bouncing towards him, even though Frankie Evans was pursuing it from the other direction.

The match review officer Michael Christian, who has obviously forgotten that he played football, assessed the incident as careless conduct (whatever that means), severe impact and high contact and referred him straight to the AFL tribunal.

Steven May v Francis Evans Fox Footy

May’s counsel, Adrian Anderson, presented nine valid reasons of defence why May should be let off. (Ironically it was Adrian Anderson, when he was general manager of football operations at the AFL, who was responsible for this current mess of a tribunal system.

But he presented a convincing argument of why May should be exonerated. The most significant of those points being that he was making a genuine attempt to contest the ball, both players could have reasonably expected to win possession and the ball bounced closer to Evans on the fourth bounce.

However to the casual viewer watching the incident in real time, not slow motion, it’s impossible to discern which player got there first. Apparently it was Evans by half a second. The AFL tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson KC said he could have changed direction in 0.2 of a second.

Watching in real time it seems impossible. But the verdict and the summary were most damning.

“A reasonable player in today’s game would not have collided with Evans in the manner that happened here,” Gleeson said as he handed down his verdict.

What does that term, “reasonable player”, mean? Who defines that? Who assesses that?

The chairman is saying that a “reasonable player” would have stopped or pulled out of the contest. Put aside the reality that he didn’t have time to stop anyway, the chairman of the tribunal is saying Steven May should have stopped and shirked the contest.

Really? Give me the unreasonable player any day.

Melbourne's Steven May hit on Francis Evans

The most demeaning action a footballer can be accused of is “shirking the contest”. In other words, pulling up, running off the line of contact, or “taking short steps”.

The humiliation of such actions and accusations stay with a footballer for life. Careers have been terminated because players have shirked the contest.

Surely this is not where football is headed? Is the tribunal telling players to shirk the contest?

Australian football is a unique sport. It caters for all shapes and sizes. Caleb Daniel, now at North Melbourne is 171cm tall. Max Gawn, the Melbourne captain is 208cm. The contrast is staggering. But there is a role for both of them.

Gawn, of course, is much celebrated, but so too is Daniel for the way he plays the game and how effective he can be.

Others players are tall and solid, although we don’t know what they weigh these days because the AFL in its leaning to wokeness, doesn’t put the weights of players in their official record, which had previously been the case.

But there are big guys, little guys, solid men, wiry men. There are quick players and there are slow players. They’ve all played the game since they were young, except, of course those Irish recruits who venture from their homeland and their politicised Gaelic sports to try their luck with an oval ball. It’s amazing how many of them are successful.

How long will it be before a player soaring for the mark is cited for kneeing an opponent in the head, or breaking a rib or two? Photo by Morgan Hancock.

However, there is an inevitable brutality when big bodies are pitted against smaller ones. The little guy usually gets hurt. Of course they need protecting but it’s a contact sport and unless you ban tackling and bumping the collisions will continue to occur.

Accidents, football accidents, happen. We yet haven’t seen the farcical case of a player being reported for colliding accidentally with his own teammate, but what is the difference?

If a player is concussed by his own teammate you can expect, under these new contemporary rules and definitions, that the teammate should face the tribunal.

But there is more. Later in the Melbourne v Carlton game, May himself was concussed when Carlton ruckman Sam De Koning, soaring for a mark-of-the-year contender, kneed him in the back of the head.

How long will it be before a player soaring for the mark is cited for kneeing an opponent in the head, or breaking a rib or two?

Under this current system that ranks conduct as intentional or careless; impact as severe, high, medium and low and contact as either high/groin or body.

Every attempted or completed high mark, the most spectacular part of our game, breaches one of those guidelines.

In the meantime players have to decide whether to continue hit the ball hard and to tackle ferociously or take short steps and “squib” it.