Jon Ralph: Power sanctions leave us all asking – when will AFL players realise how good they have it?
The irresponsible actions of Port Adelaide’s Dan Houston and Peter Ladhams have hurt the Power’s chances of a top-two spot. They also showed AFL players still aren’t taking COVID warnings seriously – and it’s about time they did.
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This year’s premiership will be hard enough to win without acts of self-sabotage.
Without the sheer idiocy that Port Adelaide pair Peter Ladhams and Dan Houston involved themselves in on the night of August 3 earlier this month.
Now, they have placed Port’s firm grip on a top-two finish at risk.
Instead of tucking themselves in bed after the Power’s 13-point victory over the Western Bulldogs, they decided to “entertain visitors”.
It’s a bland way of saying they decided to ignore the multiple warnings about COVID breaches handed down after teammate Ollie Wines’ infraction and do exactly what the hell they wanted.
Which was invite a group of mates over and party until 3am despite knowing it was exactly the kind of illegality that could see them suspended like Ollie Wines and Steele Sidebottom, and subsequently Sydney’s Elijah Taylor.
Of course it eventually filtered out, with the pair surely believing they had got away with the COVID breach before it was exposed through that brilliant 21st century invention – social media.
Thankfully as they partied until 3am Ladhams’ housemate, Adelaide player Billy Frampton had evidence that he had remained in bed with training the next morning.
Presumably it was a text message telling them to grow up and go to bed.
Without it, he might easily have been dragged into the saga after already being one of 16 players suspended by the AFL for the ill-advised COVID training breach in the Barossa Valley.
They can count themselves lucky not to be suspended for the rest of the home-and-away season, their act every bit of blatant as Taylor’s premeditated act to sneak his girlfriend into the Joondalup resort.
The AFL’s reasoning for the lighter suspensions – Ladhams given three weeks as the instigator and Houston two – is that in Taylor’s case the WA police were involved.
For Ken Hinkley, the suspensions will be particularly galling when this season is laid out so enticingly for the 9-3 Power.
It might not cost him the flag given a soft-ish draw – Hawthorn, Sydney, North Melbourne, Essendon and Collingwood to come – but as the Magpies have shown in recent months, it doesn’t take much of a distraction to derail your season.
Ladhams has given Hinkley all that he has asked in the past six weeks, first playing dominant games as a pure ruckman and then in the past two weeks as a ruck-forward as Scott Lycett has returned.
Not many players have the dexterity to play first ruck then go forward and kick two goals as a leading forward on Dylan Grimes, as Ladhams was able to do only a few weeks back.
If Lycett’s dodgy knee fails him again with Ladhams out suspended, Hinkley will be ropeable.
Houston is his Mr Fixit, playing on the elite smalls like Charlie Cameron and Dan Rioli in a 65-35 defensive-midfield split and so good in that role he is top five in the comp for pressure and tackles as a small defender.
Season-long bans would have been a disaster. Port will need both men come finals time.
They should be forced to apologise to the Port Adelaide staff too, given the $25,000 hit to the football department cap next year could be the difference between one of those officials being sacked or retained.
The want to forgive and forget has long since passed given the stakes involved for the AFL.
There is a real degree of sympathy for players and officials trapped interstate without their partners and families for up to 15 weeks.
But it’s time for those in their own beds or with families in tropic resorts to get with the program and stop feeling sorry for themselves.
What would so many people in Melbourne do right now to have the freedom of players like Ladhams and Houston?
To wake up every morning with the biggest decision being whether to put on the blue tracksuit pants or the grey ones.
To have your single hour of exercise for the day one where you’re seething as you walk past residential construction sites with mask-less workers seemingly without a care in the world.
If only an aspect of their punishment was to be transported to Melbourne and live under those conditions, with seemingly no end in sight, to get the kind of reality check they deserve.
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Originally published as Jon Ralph: Power sanctions leave us all asking – when will AFL players realise how good they have it?