MRP

Adrian Anderson’s Match Review Panel system continues to defy reasonable expectation.

Early in the season, Campbell Brown’s “reckless” backward elbow got him only a two-week holiday (albeit followed by another two-week penalty for his high tackle of Barry Hall).

Last week it was the Trengove/Dangerfield incident where Trengove was charged with “high contact” — which he didn’t make, as we noted in the previous post. We agree that sling tackles are dangerous, but it seemed the MRP had decided to use Trengove to make a statement about sling tackles and loaded up the charge.

This week it’s the Bombers’ Heath Hocking who has been the subject of the MRP’s capricious assessment. Hocking’s contact with Brisbane’s James Polkinghorne has been labelled “intentional”. For those who’ve not seen the video, Hocking was tagging Simon Black. Black was running from the centre of the ground to the forward flank, trailed by Hocking. As Hocking approached him, Polkinghorne made a clear motion to block the running Hocking.



As is clear from the image, Hocking had less than a step to decide a course of action and, in the circumstances where Polkinghorne’s block is clearly about to be delivered with considerable force, protect himself. Quite how the resultant contact of Hocking’s arm to Polkinghorne’s neck is “intentional” in these circumstances defeats us.

But there’s another issue here. The block that Polkinghorne delivered is illegal under the AFL laws of the game. The ball is clearly a considerable distance from the blocking action. In many other cases, this sort of blocking elicits an off the ball free kick. Does Polkinghorne, by his own conscious action, place himself in a position where Hocking has no other alternative than to protect himself?

This same issue crops up in free kicks paid for high contact where a player with his head down makes contact with the legs of a standing player. The standing player has not initiated contact, yet is penalised as if he had.

MRP matrix

AussieRulesBlog has become increasingly uncomfortable with the assessments of the MRP. We tried to find something on the AFL’s website relating how the MRP comes to its decisions. We were defeated by the extraordinarily hopeless search facility on the site.

Feeling somewhat Quixotic, we went to the Contact Us link on the site and posted an enquiry asking about  the system used by the MRP. A ‘form’ response advised that our request would be passed on the “the BigPond Team” for resolution. Now, AussieRulesBlog is a BigPond customer and we are very happy with the speed, reliability and cost of our service, but we don’t think we’ll shock many readers by reporting that we’re yet to hear from “the BigPond Team” about our request despite the passage of many weeks.

Purely by accident, we became aware that the detail we sought was included in a Tribunal Booklet for 2007. When we searched again using Tribunal Booklet rather than Match Review Panel or MRP, we were, eventually, rewarded with a result: the AFL’s 2010 Tribunal Booklet. This booklet details the whole process for reporting, assessing, penalties and the colour of jocks worn by the third field umpire on days ending in y. There are some fascinating contents.

Intentional

definition of ‘intentional’ – A player intentionally commits a reportable offence if the player engages in the conduct constituting the reportable offence with the intention of committing that offence. An intention is a state of mind. Intention may be formed on the spur of the moment. [Our italics]

So, let’s go back to Hocking and Polkinghorne. We’re not going to claim that Hocking is the personification of the Good Fairy — he is what some would refer to as an “uncompromising” tagger. Looking at the still above, is it clear that Hocking is about to “engage in the conduct constituting the reportable offence with the intention of committing that offence” [again, our italics]? Damn right it’s not. He’s figuring out how he’s going to protect himself as Polkinghorne is moving aggressively toward him.

Clearly the Bombers have been spooked by Melbourne’s challenge of the Trengove penalty and have opted not to contest the assessment. Fortunately, those of us not associated with clubs still have the capacity to highlight the inadequacies of the MRP’s work.