Well, it’s official. With tonight’s Tribunal clearing Lindsay Thomas of a rough conduct charge, the Match Review Panel members must be wondering why they bother — and why the guidelines they work to generate such ludicrously incorrect assessments.
As AussieRulesBlog noted yesterday, the MRP’s awarding of a three-week penalty to Thomas over the incident in which Gary Rohan’s leg was rather graphically broken was flat-out wrong. The matter should have been thrown out at the MRP stage and the Kangaroos would now be well-entitled to demand compensation from the AFL for their time and effort in defending Thomas.
But, as much opprobrium as the MRP deserve, some media figures deserve truckloads more, notably ex-Swans coach Paul Roos (and the Herald-Sun’s Mark Robinson not too far behind).
Prior to Roos joining Fox Footy Channel’s On the Couch last year, we considered him a moderate and rational person. We found him so irritating and irrational that within a few weeks last year we stopped watching On the Couch, previously a must in our weekly footy schedule.
Roos out-did himself on Monday night’s On the Couch [which we watched because James Hird was on prior to tomorrow’s Anzac Day game]. We can only think that jet lag hadn’t yet cleared Roos’ mind after his recent trip to the US. He said [and we’re paraphrasing here] he had watched the Thomas incident and then watched the previous week’s Goodes slide tackle. Then he said, if Goodes was suspended, Thomas had to be suspended because he’d injured an opponent.
The logic on display here is breathtaking. Taken to its logical conclusion, if we are in a marking contest and an opponent makes a spectacular, but mistimed, leap and crashes to the ground injuring himself in the process, we should be penalised by the Match Review Panel. Why? We, inadvertently, injured an opponent.
Roos’ credibility is absolutely shredded, as is Adrian Anderson’s Match Review Panel system.
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