AFL Grand Final 2020: Patrick Dangerfield cleared after brutal collision with Nick Vlastuin
Patrick Dangerfield has been cleared to play in Round 1 next year despite the brutal collision that took Richmond’s Nick Vlastuin out of the Grand Final. This is why the MRO said he didn’t have a case to answer.
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Patrick Dangerfield has been cleared to play in Round 1 next year despite the brutal collision that took Richmond’s Nick Vlastuin out of the Grand Final.
AFL match review officer Michael Christian ruled the Geelong star had no case to answer
given he punched the ball in the split second before he collided with Vlastuin.
His elbow collected Vlastuin in a crunching collision, with the Tigers star knocked out of the game and unable to return.
Christian ruled that with the ball loose, Dangrefield had no alternative other than to contest it as he and Vlastuin closed in on each other.
“Vlastuin and Dangerfield approach the ball from opposing directions. Dangerfield punches the ball and in the process makes high contact to Vlastuin. It was the view of the MRO that Dangerfield’s actions were not unreasonable,” the AFL said in a statement.
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Dangerfield’s arm was out horizontally punching the ball and only a split second later he made high contact to Vlastuin’s head.
In normal speed he made contact only a fraction of a second after punching the ball.
The MRO has cracked down on incidents involving raised forearms when they are deemed a strike.
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But the severity of a player’s injury and capacity to return to the game is only taken into account if MRO boss Michael Christian deems it a reportable incident.
Dangerfield said post-match he didn’t believe he would be suspended for the incident.
Under Grand Final MRO guidelines any act which would draw a suspension of two or more weeks is automatically referred to the tribunal where they have discretion to hand the player any penalty they see fit.
“I didn’t think there was much in it,” Dangerfield said.
“I was trying to tap the ball away and there’s three Richmond players coming towards me.
“Had there been something in it there would have been repercussions on the field, but from everyone it was just play-on. It’s a contact sport.”
34 MINUTES OF MAYHEM RIVAL 1989 EPIC
For all the jaw-dropping surprises and twists this season has provided, the potential for it to fizzle into anticlimax still hung in the air before the first night Grand Final.
A week-long lead-in bereft of spark and an interminable Saturday wait for the first bounce were the prelude for a Gabba quagmire that promised a low-scoring slog.
Instead, we will long remember this game for a quarter etched in footy folklore.
Before Dusty’s heroics that elevated him on par with Leigh Matthews and before the comeback that will seal Richmond’s legacy as one of football’s truly great teams came 34 minutes of pure football drama.
Three decades after the 1989 Grand Final, the bone-jarring collisions that occurred just 185 seconds into this contest were only the mouthwatering entree.
And it gave this insane, controversy-strewn season a conclusion that will have you remembering exactly where you were as you watched in sheer astonishment.
By the time a pair of Brisbane bogans attempted a crowd invasion in their own desperate attempt for attention, this truly was the quarter with everything.
The centrepiece was a collision of such sheer force that the postscript looked like a highway car crash from a Mad Max movie, a George Miller fever dream of epic proportions.
Bodies were strewn, bones were wrenched from sockets and as your brain tried to catch up with the action the question was this: what in god’s name just happened?
Patrick Dangerfield has tried all manner of ways to win finals but finally he has realised his best asset is to turn himself into a human battering ram.
Dangerfield won, punching the ball with arms outstretched, then in the millisecond between that action and bracing for contact he threw his elbow into Vlastuin’s path.
Then the cameras darted to Gary Ablett squirting out a quick handball as Trent Cotchin rode him to the ground.
In last year’s Grand Final it was Cotchin spearing into Shane Mumford to topple him in a standard-setting tackle.
This time Ablett braced for the fall to protect his twice-repaired shoulder and instead ripped that left wing out of its joint.
As those cameras swirled, Vlastuin laid prone and fans frantically tried to catch up, it was hard to know what to think.
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So Ablett’s much-spruiked “Last Dance” will be a cruel three-minute stumble into the gutter?
With Vlastuin knocked out cold and Ablett surely done for the day, which team has lost the bigger star?
The clock was seemingly frozen at 12.55min forever.
For all the modern sensibilities football has always feasted on brutality like this, from the 1990 Essendon-Collingwood halftime brawl to Alastair Lynch’s air swings on Darryl Wakelin to Graeme Yeats shirt-front on Dermott Brereton.
Imagine the rapturous reception had Ablett re-emerged from the rooms at a packed MCG on Grand Final day to signal his intent to return.
He was back with eight minutes on the clock in that first stanza and if the local crowd didn’t sense the occasion it was staggering nonetheless.
Brisbane famously boasted of using 18 vials of painkilling injections in their 2003 premiership victory but surely the same amount went into Ablett’s twice-reconstructed shoulder.
To think Ablett, who spent the next three quarters battered and wincing in agony, was once considered a player who could not or would not play with pain.
What followed were a trio of perfect assists to teammates including one mind-blowingly quick lookaway handball to Joel Selwood to hit Tom Hawkins in stride.
Just as Brad Ebert’s final moments told of the toll football takes, Ablett added yet another famous chapter to his storeyed career.
Vlastuin’s absence ripped the Tigers defence asunder, Dylan Grimes dragged away from the action by Gary Rohan and the intercept game vanishing.
Yet Martin’s deft chiselled drop-punt that dropped a metre over the intercepting Cats defender to Liam Baker to set up Kamydn McIntosh’s nerve-settling goal was only a portent of his brilliance to come.
Richmond’s game plan might be the most successful in modern football because like few in warfare it can withstand brutal enemy attack.
It doesn’t require all of its stars to fire, it doesn’t require every cog to work, it absorbs and bends and then is capable of creating the sudden blitzkrieg that saw the Tigers come back from 22 points down as if it was Carlton’s famous 44-point comeback in 1970.
For Dangerfield, the sad reality as he was unleashed in the midfield only late was that flooring Vlastuin was his game’s most important intervention.
“They will make a few movies about this. That was the hardest game I have ever played, “ said Tiger Shane Edwards post-match.
Maybe so, and the swirling close-ups will focus on a quarter of sheer quality that laid the platform for the comeback that turns Richmond’s premierships into a dynasty.
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Originally published as AFL Grand Final 2020: Patrick Dangerfield cleared after brutal collision with Nick Vlastuin