AFL must introduce automatic suspensions for punches, Mark Robinson writes
IT was a calamitous and disappointing day for football. And today AFL boss Gillon McLachlan can turn his distaste into action, Mark Robinson writes.
Mark Robinson
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WHAT a calamitous and disappointing day for football.
AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan’s distaste — and that of many others — for any punching on the footy field was made clear on Monday.
But not clear enough.
WATCH BEN CUNNINGTON’S GUT PUNCH IN THE VIDEO ABOVE
Today, he must turn his distaste into immediate action and announce an overhaul of penalties for gut punches, jumper punches, any damned punches.
The penalties for these punches need urgent review and McLachlan can no longer allow the MRP and the AFL to embarrass the code by condoning this level of violence.
McLachlan must announce that any punches from now on will carry an automatic one-week suspension.
Depending on force and damage, they can be two, three and maybe seven or eight-week suspensions.
Cheap-shot punches must be eradicated from the game because what’s allowed and not allowed on the AFL seeps down to suburban and country football and, worse still, down to the tackers playing on Sunday mornings.
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The AFL has waylaid its leadership on violence.
The rest of the community is trying to eradicate the one punch — the coward’s punch — on the streets and although it’s a never ending battle, there’s a sense the campaign has been more successful than not.
There’s a sense the AFL allows such behaviour.
Certainly, the match review panel is letting down football, for it continues to give the green light to players to clobber opposition players in the guts. You can even punch them in the face if you like, only if you grab a skerrick of the jumper in doing so.
North Melbourne’s Ben Cunnington on Monday was fined $1000 for gut-punching Bernie Vince which forced Vince from the field and to vomit on Saturday
The week before Trent Cotchin was fined $1000 for jumper punching Lachie Neale.
By that reckoning, Barry Hall would’ve got a $1000 fine (and a $1000 suspended) if he grabbed Brent Staker’s jumper before knocking him into the next suburb.
Cunnington’s blow was rated low impact to the body. Vince spewed and left the ground.
If that’s low, can we ask what’s medium? Broken ribs?
And what’s high impact? Broken spleen, ruptured kidney, burst bladder?
And what’s severe? Death?
The calamity on Monday came when Jimmy Bartel, who joined the match review five minutes ago, called for an overhaul of the controversial table of offences the panel uses to grade offences.
Jimmy played 305 games for the Cats, but it took him only nine rounds for the MRP penalties to do his head in.
“(The table of offences) has become so small that they’re all lumped in together,” Bartel said on RSN.
“You could get a week for a sling tackle, because you’ve got to go through the boxes, but you could get a week for punching.
“It would be great if you had something called football acts and non-football acts.’’
That’s all well and good, but Bartel and Co. are the ones who deemed Cunnington low impact and Cotchin last week not intentional.
Jimmy, you can’t have it both ways. The laws may be weak, but at least enforce them to their full.
If the match review panel won’t be fair dinkum, it’s even more important for McLachlan to come over the top, as he has threatened.
The league will jump on integrity issues such as the Melbourne tanking, the Adelaide salary cap scandal, Matt Rendell’s racism issue and Essendon drugs saga and despite this being a different type of integrity, they can’t deny the image of players punching players is poor for the game.
Without action, the league cannot be seen to anything but blasé about punching.
And it’s easily fixed. You punch, you are suspended.
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