MRP farce

According to Match Review Panel chairman, Mark Fraser, Essendon’s Leroy Jetta behaved in an unsportsmanlike manner which could have triggered a melee by falling to the ground feigning a blow to the face and a staging charge was therefore appropriate. Fraser admitted there was a slight contact to Jetta.

 

A week earlier, the Saints’ Brendon Goddard also fell to the ground after feigning a blow to the head. The MRP found that Goddard’s exaggeration of contact didn’t cross the threshold of unsportsmanlike conduct. The saving grace for Goddard appeared to be that Mitch Robinson had gripped his guernsey and was pulling it down. What’s missing is that Goddard was already exaggerating the head contact before whatever tiny force Robinson applied assisted Goddard groundwards.

 

Sorry, Mr Chairman, but was Goddard’s action any less likely to incite a melee than Jetta’s? No. Was there contact in both instances? By your own admission, yes. So, where does such a different result come from? Was Goddard’s action any more sportsmanlike than Jetta’s? A resounding No! But we get a different result. Why?

 

At its commencement, a Match Review Panel with a codified table for assessment of severity, impact and intent seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea. OK, it didn’t, but we could see where the thinking was coming from — remove seemingly capricious judgement calls and provide a greater degree of consistency.

 

And what have we seen from the MRP over five or so years? Seemingly capricious judgement calls and a decided lack of discernable consistency.

 

This Match Review Panel is the one the Monty Python team might have dreamt up. But then they would have thrown the idea out because it was too far-fetched. . .