Dissent is not evil

It’s a mark of totalitarian regimes that they do not tolerate dissent and that’s an unfortunate association for the AFL to be courting when it admonishes players or officials who comment on legitimate points of discussion in the game.

 

This last week, in the wake of the Ziebell-Judd equivalency, three players took to the ether to express a view and North Melbourne coach Brad Scott chose a media interview to do the same.

 

The three players were issued with a ‘please explain’ letter each.

 

Drew Petrie’s tweet: “advice for jackziebell. Stop being so courageous and playing footy hard that way it's meant to be played. Please turn into a softy!”

 

James Kelly’s tweet: “I was going to tweet how Zebel getting 4 weeks was a mare of a decision but decided not to so I don't get in trouble.”

 

The AFL has apparently determined that these comments were not in breach of Rule 23.18.2 — a rule that doesn’t appear in the AFL’s 1012 version of the laws of the game in case you were thinking of checking it out — in that they were not “unfair, unreasonable or excessive”.

 

It’s just too precious of the AFL to insist that players and officials cannot criticise umpires, the Match Review Panel or the Tribunal when the decisions of these AFL functionaries have a significant potential effect on how players and officials can go about their tasks.

 

The Ziebell decision, where even the tribunal that suspended Ziebell agreed that he’d been attempting to gain possession of the football — a fundamental tenet of the sport of Aussie Rules, surely — goes to the very heart of how players compete for the football. The tribunal has effectively said that incidentally causing injury to an opponent whilst attempting to gain possession of the ball is an infringement of the rules of the game and will carry  some penalty.

 

This is absolutely untenable, but even more incredible is the AFL’s response to criticism. We wonder if there’d be please explain letters for players agreeing with the tribunal’s stance?

 

If the decisions of umpires, the Match Review Panel and the Tribunal cannot stand the spotlight of criticism, then our game is in a pretty bad way.

 

And by criticism AussieRulesBlog doesn’t mean the invective hurled at umpires from the stands. The Bomber supporter (unfortunately) just below us on Friday night who commented on every umpiring decision by shouting “You idiot!” or “You moron!” is where the AFL should concentrate their efforts. We wonder if he knew he was referring to himself?