Brodie Grundy must be suspended for tackle which knocked out Ben Brown, writes Jon Ralph
NATHAN Buckley is wrong, Brodie Grundy did not execute the perfect tackle on Ben Brown, writes JON RALPH, and the Collingwood defender deserves to be suspended.
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EDDIE McGuire often favours that wonderful take from politics on life’s motivations: “Always back self interest because you know it’s trying”.
It’s why we shouldn’t be too hard on Nathan Buckley for Saturday’s night’s extreme gibberish.
Buckley stated optimistically that Brodie Grundy’s actions on Ben Brown were the “perfect tackle”.
If the “perfect tackle” were dumping of the game’s best players into the turf so hard he spent a night in hospital then our game would be in crisis.
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Thankfully the game will survive because Grundy deserves to be suspended for his hit and will be on Monday afternoon.
Buckley’s statement is nonsense because a simple reading of the MRP guidelines contradicts everything he said on Monday night.
Those rules state if you pin a player’s arms and put him in a vulnerable state with a tackle of excessive force that sees him injured, you are done.
Especially if there is a double movement or a whipping action that builds momentum.
Grundy’s tackle was perfect — in the 1980s.
Yet under the current guidelines — which are the only ones which matter — he ticks just about every box the AFL is interested in stamping out.
Surely Buckley was doing what Chris Scott attempted after Patrick Dangerfield’s tackle last week — trying to reduce a potential penalty.
Scott’s defence was expertly worded and yet by Friday night Brian Cook admitted the club had on Tuesday ruled Dangerfield had only a 30-50 per cent chance of overturning the verdict.
In other words, the Cats agreed even a lineball tackle that could so easily have seen Matthew Kreuzer play on was still illegal.
Those who would argue Grundy’s tackle was correct are simple failing to move with the times or ignoring what the current rules tell us.
Brad Scott said on Friday tactical shifts happen every three weeks in football when they used to take three months.
So why are so many in football so determined to ignore the glaring precedents the MRP provides by the week?
Are they rooted in the past or wilfully ignorant?
The MRP made clear even a borderline tackle like the Dangerfield incident would get you suspended and every player should have listened to the message.
Especially when Gillon McLachlan reinforced it on Friday.
“This concept of being able to pin a bloke’s arms and drive their head into the turf and knock them out. I think the rule is right and was the application right? I think it was,” McLachlan said on 3AW.
From then on any senior coach or footy boss who didn’t sit their players down last week and tell them not to pin-and-slam was doing their club a disservice.
It doesn’t matter what happened in the good old days, what you want the rule to be, whether Brodie Grundy is a lovely bloke, if he is in your Supercoach team (he is!).
The only feedback that matters is what the MRP tells us.
Even minutes after the game, Darcy Moore nailed it: “It is definitely hard in the moment but we have a clear understanding that if the head hits the ground you are in trouble.
“It is clearly an accident but looking at the big picture as a player the rules protect players heads.”
This game has survived drug cheats, wars, salary cheating and mergers.
The only thing that can actually kill it off as we know it is the concussions that grow in threat and frequency.
Concussions that have this year have affected Jack Fitzpatrick, Sean Dempster, Kade Kolodjashnij, Patrick McCartin, Angus Brayshaw and Ben Griffiths.
Nathan Buckley knows that, having deal with the serious concussion issues that affected Ben Sinclair and Corey Gault and ended teammate Chad Rintoul’s career at the Pies.
So Grundy will be suspended, and those players who don’t not listen to recent history are doomed to repeat it.
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