Malcolm Blight blasts AFL recruiters for asking draft hopefuls the trolley problem

Malcolm Blight isn’t happy about football talent scouts posing this hypothetical dilemma to youngsters — labelling it a mental health risk.

Noah Anderson. (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

Brownlow medalist and premiership coach Malcolm Blight has unloaded after hearing AFL recruiters had asked young footballers to make a hypothetical decision on whether to kill one person to save five lives at the AFL Draft Combine.

“This is sick, a sick, sick thing that is going on,’’ he said on Sportsday SA.

“These questions that our 18-year-old kids are getting asked by recruiters are about life and death. It should never happen, it’s crazy. Why would you ask such a range of questions about weird situations that would never happen?

“It’s ludicrous, hypothethetical rubbish. Why would you put young men in the situation of choosing how many people should die in a make believe test of character?

“What I would ask the recruiters and everyone in the football world now is, if the AFL don’t do something about this we may have more mental health problems.’’

Blight went as far as to say that “someone had hijacked our game’’. “I’m serious about this,’’ Blight said. “People have to ring up Gillon McLachlan and tell him that this is absolute garbage. What’s it got to do with playing footy?

“What about recruiters watching with their eyes to discover if a player can play football.

“If you’re a recruiter, watch what the player does. And what about your tongue, you can ask coaches, teachers, friends about players.’’

Mooted top two pick Noah Anderson revealed he was posed the classic dilemma during an interview with an AFL club at a recent combine where footy hopefuls are put through a range of physical and mental tests.

The 18-year-old Victorian midfielder explained it like this when re-telling the experience to SEN on Wednesday: “You’re standing at the train station and there is five people on the train tracks and the train is coming but next to you is a lever. If you pull the lever the train goes onto another track but runs over one person. Would you pull the lever?”

The question posed to Noah Anderson. Picture: The Conversation/Shutterstock

Respondents are forced to make an ethical decision: is the morally preferable option to take action and save four lives but also make yourself partially responsible for a person’s death — or choose not to participate and let events take their course.

Anderson was also asked an extension: if there was an overweight person standing next to the tracks and you could save the lives of the five by pushing the man in front of the train, would you do it?

Trolley dilemma posed to AFL draft hopefuls. Picture: The Conversation/Shutterstock

Anderson said no, which is a common response given the second case involves intentionally harming the man, rather than the side effect of the person’s death after the decision to pull the lever.

It wasn’t the only head-scratcher asked of the top prospects who gathered in the Melbourne Park precinct over the long weekend.

Anderson also revealed Gold Coast asked “some really weird questions”. “They showed me a photo of a bike race, I was able to look at it for 10 seconds and then I had to tell them a story about the race,” he told AFL Trade Radio. “I was all over the shop.”

And potential top 10 pick Brodie Kemp told foxsports.com.au Sydney had five toys and wanted him to pick one and explain why.

“(There was) a fake spider, big blue ball where you squeeze it, jelly, a puzzle and one of those slap bracelets,” Kemp said. “I picked the big fluffy ball as it just looked really appealing.”

Originally published as Malcolm Blight blasts AFL recruiters for asking draft hopefuls the trolley problem