No-one should be surprised by Eddie McGuire’s outburst over Mick Malthouse’s frank assessment of the Barcodes circa round 3, 2012. Eddie is, and has always been, first and foremost a showman. It’s the sizzle that excites McGuire, not the sausage.

Here at AussieRulesBlog Central, we haven’t managed to get past the adverts for McGuire’s eponymously-titled new TV vehicle. It’s clear that EMT takes a lowest common denominator approach — not unlike The Footy Show, a former McGuire vehicle — and isn’t interested in anything much other than sizzle.

Nathan Buckley, on the other hand, has his feet firmly planted on the ground, regardless of his FIGJAM reputation. No wonder then that he backed his predecessor's right to comment as he felt was appropriate.

And, of course, the ‘controversy’ was turned up to ‘High’ by that soul of sober reflection, The Age’s Caroline Wilson.

Did anyone really expect that Malthouse wouldn’t be asked his opinion of the 2012 Barcodes? More especially since he’s employed to provide insightful comments on football?

McGuire isn’t quite the shrinking violet that Jeff Kennett is, but they both generate far more column centimetres than they’re entitled to.

Storm? Meet teacup.

The whole Matt Rendell–Jason Mifsud scenario this last week is puzzling indeed. Rendell and Mifsud are reportedly friends. In a meeting in January, Rendell apparently made some remarks that Mifsud took exception to, but, puzzlingly, he didn’t confront Rendell at the time. Instead, he reported to AFL HQ and they wait until March to get involved (at least publicly).

Why the delay? If Mifsud was “deeply offended” as reported in The Age today, why didn’t he yell, curse, accuse, berate or simply punch Rendell in the moments following the comments?

One explanation for the delayed action might be that a couple of high-profile indigenous players have featured in “controversial” stories between January and mid-March. There’s also been the storm in a teacup over comments by James Hird and Paul Roos, which AussieRulesBlog has commented on a number of times.

Is this a confected controversy with Rendell as the fall guy? Well, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck . . .

It’s worth noting that AussieRulesBlog took both Mifsud and Caroline Wilson to task for their disingenuous interpretation of Hird and Roos recently. If Mifsud could take an extreme position on comments by two of the milder personalities in football, then there’s a prima facie case to call into question his later interpretation of Rendell’s remarks.

But let’s consider the reported remarks. AussieRulesBlog condemns in the strongest possible terms anyone disadvantaging any indigenous person simply because they are indigenous. If Rendell made the remarks as reported, that he and his club would only recruit an indigenous player if the player had one ‘white’ parent, he deserves condemnation.

This remark, the context of which is now hotly disputed, apparently followed on the departure of a number of young indigenous players who had difficulty adjusting to the city and to the AFL environment.

We should just remind ourselves here that there are a number of non-indigenous recruits each year, including some high-profile prestige draft picks, who fail to adjust to the AFL environment.

AFL clubs are testing environments. There’s a lot of money and millions of people’s heartfelt affections resting on teams’ performances each week. This is not place for the timid or the unmotivated.

Each year, kids from a wide variety of backgrounds are thrown into this meat grinder that is the AFL. Some emerge, like Daniel Rich or Dyson Heppell, and look like they were born to it. Others, like Jay Neagle, despite undoubted talent, can’t take the last step. The kids mentioned are from relatively privileged backgrounds. Despite that one of them didn’t make it.

For some of those kids drafted or rookied, we also need to factor in extreme cultural dislocation. The cultural chasm between an outback lifestyle and the footy played there on the one hand and the AFL environment and its football on the other hand could hardly be larger if the kids were sent to Mars to train. Is it any wonder some struggle to make the adjustment?

The point Rendell now says he was trying to make, that a couple of years of less-highly structured acclimatisation for indigenous players before entering the AFL environment would prove beneficial for players and AFL clubs alike, seems to make a lot of sense. It’s a great pity that it has been lost in the sensationalist accusations being flung around.

The furore over coaches’ runners in AFL has been brought on purely and simply because of Seven’s packaging of a wired-up Rohan Smith on last Friday night’s broadcast.

Seven’s half-time package of Smith, from the first half of the game, gave the impression that he did nothing other than coach while he was on the field. When a half of AFL lasts fifty to sixty minutes and the runner could spend, practically, at most twenty-five to thirty minutes on the field, a sixty to ninety-second package of vision and audio can hardly be taken as representative of the whole period.

And does anyone believe that Seven’s director and editors didn’t see the opportunity to create some controversy?

AussieRulesBlog is nevertheless puzzled on a number of issues.

Why would Smith agree to wear the wire, presumably being aware of the sensitivity of the issue? Why would the club, through its football department, agree to it? Or did Smith believe he could temper his behaviour and got ‘caught up in the moment’?

It’s hard not to see Seven has having sold Smith and the Bulldogs a pup. It’s hard not to conclude that they knew, or at the very least had a pretty shrewd idea, what they’d get from the exercise.

The most puzzling issue is whether AFL management allow the agenda to be driven by broadcasters or whether they put Seven up to the job to create a clamour for action.

Coaches’ runners spending time on the ground has been a long-standing issue. The nature of AFL, the length of defined periods of play and the size of the field all mitigate against the sort of messaging from the sideline used in, for instance, soccer.

America’s NFL has no need for such messaging because of the stop-start nature of the game, frequent change of on-field personnel and ‘time-outs’.

So, in a practical sense, coaches’ runners in AFL are a mixed blessing. As with any other rule, coaches will push the envelope and stretch interpretations until breaking point. Smith and Seven may have brought the matter to a head, but there’s little prospect of runners being removed from the game.

Finally, according to Caroline Wilson’s article, the AFL is “increasingly concerned that errant on-field messengers were hurting the game as a spectacle”. What? What absolute nonsense! AussieRulesBlog simply cannot think of a single instance where another club’s runner changed the spectacle of the game in any way. Of course, it goes without saying that [WARNING: sarcasm following] our club’s runners have the purest of motives and would never transgress the rules.

AussieRulesBlog can’t imagine that the football departments of the sixteen other clubs are feeling warm and fuzzy to the Bulldogs’ footy department this week.

Today’s vigorous attack on North Melbourne President James Brayshaw, penned by Caroline Wilson, misses the mark on so many levels.

Let’s start by calling a spade a spade and acknowledging that Wilson’s job is to write opinion pieces and to create controversy. That’s what she has done.

She contrasts Brayshaw with the Barcodes’ Eddie McGuire and Melbourne’s Jim Stynes, writing that the comparisons are unfair, but continuing nevertheless. The problem is that by avoiding comparison and contrast of the respective contexts, she ends up comparing apples with oranges and mangoes.

So, let’s do what Wilson failed to do.

McGuire heads up a financial, marketing and sponsorship behemoth at the Barcodes. Sure, Presidents in the past went close to sending the club to the wall, but without denigrating McGuire’s achievements, even Wilson could run this club successfully. The 40k crowd at Docklands on Saturday night seemed to have more than a fair share of Barcodes, for instance. On-field success has made the normally vocal Barcode army howl with expectation.

Stynes’ Demons have many, many connections to wealthy establishment Melbourne. It’s not accidental that they have wiped out the club’s debt. Stynes’ force of personality was certainly a factor, but no amount of personality would satisfy the banks. A goodly number of Demons supporters have pretty deep pockets (and the long arms to reach the cash!).

By contrast, Brayshaw’s North Melbourne has neither the organisational size, nor the marketing muscle to be able to make the grand gestures so beloved of Eddie Everywhere. Nor does North have the connections to affluent Melbourne that Stynes has been able to tap. North’s background has always been solidly working class.

So, clearly, comparisons of the three are fraught exercises, and we haven’t even touched on the issue of personal style.

The obvious fact that both Brayshaw and McGuire work in the media doesn’t make for any automatic alikeness. It is disingenuous of Wilson to imply that it does.

AussieRulesBlog doesn’t set out to defend Brayshaw. He’s done a pretty effective job of that for himself, so he hardly needs our help.

On the other hand, pundits like Wilson, Mike Sheahan and the annoying Patrick Smith get to pontificate on everyone in football from the AFL Commission chairman to the lowliest bootstudder at the bottom club, all without the danger of actually having to do the job themselves.

We wonder how well Wilson would do as President of the Kangaroos? Or Sheahan as coach of the Bulldogs? Or Smith as anything that required a logically-constructed argument?