While AFL shows strength in Blues brothers appeal, AFLPA goes weak on on-field sledging
The AFL response to touching an umpire and the AFLPA’s response to the Lamb-Baguley sledging are poles apart. One is on the front foot, the other is on the back foot, writes MARK ROBINSON.
Mark Robinson
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COMMON sense still lives at the AFL.
Nonsense pervades at the AFLPA.
The decision by headquarters to appeal the fines imposed on Carlton brothers, Ed and Charlie Curnow, for making contact with an umpire is applauded.
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The brothers successfully argued that the contact was careless and not intentional as charged and fined $1000 each.
The AFL, amid a fierce backlash via media and social media, disagreed.
Clearly the AFL wants a suspension.
After Geelong’s Tom Hawkins was suspended for one week for his incident with an umpire in Round 7 - which came after he was told he would risk two weeks if he did not plead guilty - the tribunal’s decision not to suspended the Blues brothers had to be contested.
But that the league red-flagged the Curnows, but not Steven May’s “instructional” touching of an umpire at the Gabba on the same weekend, further confused both the AFL community and the football public, which followed the intense debate the week before around the Hawkins case.
Touching, swiping, glancing, brushing, intentional, careless, accidental ... there’s too much scope for inconsistency.
A fine of $1000 - which is dinner for two at Vue de Monde for these guys - was never going to pass. If the fine for the Curnows was $10,000 each, you suspect the barrage of complaint would’ve been a murmur.
But what really affects footballers and underlines the gravity of the offence is a suspension.
Somehow, the touching of an umpire, which is one of the cultural cornerstones of Australian Rules, has been relaxed.
In fact, so has been the acceptance of some distasteful and disrespectful behaviour on the field in recent times, such as rubbing of opponents’ hair and rushing to humiliate an opponent after a goal is kicked.
In America basketball, it’s called taunting and a foul is called.
In the AFL, it’s part of the game and accepted.
The most notable being the on-field sledging of each other by Carlton’s Jed Lamb and Essendon’s Mark Baguley at the MCG on Saturday.
Incredibly, AFLPA boss Paul Marsh said on SEN on Wednesday: “We have spoken to both sides of the issue and to be honest, I think this is a massive beat-up.
“This stuff goes on, are we that hard up for stories at the moment that this is where the focus is on? I find it incredible we are even talking about this one.”
So, Lamb makes comments - and allegedly not for the first time - in reference to a birthmark on Baguley’s face and Baguley hits back with comments about Lamb’s father and continued to do so after being asked not to mention his father.
OK, let’s accept Baguley didn’t know Lamb’s dad was murdered, but his comments about Lamb’s dad were pretty foul anyhow.
And making fun of someone’s facial birthmark?
Marsh rightly talks about football as a workplace when it comes to negotiating pay and conditions, issues like minimum wage and leave and education and welfare.
How would the Lamb-Baguley exchange be accepted at any other workplace?
No, Paul, bullying in the workplace is not “a massive beat-up”.
It seems others have more concerns about on-field sledging and bullying than Marsh does.
Maybe it’s because the AFLPA boss said last year he would discuss a potential players’ code of conduct with his members during mid-season club visits, and admitted no sledging charter was in place, notwithstanding racism and homophobia are covered by the AFL’s code of conduct.
This nothing-to-see-here attitude arguably condones sledging of facial birthmarks and of fathers?
Amid the vile personal sledging last year of Marc Murphy by St Kilda’s Jake Carlisle, Marsh said: “It’s our view that on-field incidents are isolated and generally, players show great respect for each other.’’
It was cheap shot from Marsh to blame this story on media and not the players who, after all, decided to go lowbrow with their personal comments to each other.
All Marsh was trying to do was deflect the real issue, on-field taunting remains an ugly part of the game.
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