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.

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.

We suppose that Jason Mifsud, the AFL's national community engagement manager, might be excused in part by his job for launching into Paul Roos and James Hird in today’s Age. Mifsud follows the Caroline Wilson line which we’ve discussed previously. Lets get to the heart of the matter. He and Wilson are wrong.

Mifsud warms to his task, identifying one after another indigenous AFL player who exhibits endurance in some attempt to show that Roos and Hird have mis-spoken. The only problem is they didn’t say EVERY indigenous player was bereft of endurance.

Roos and Hird have been around the game a little bit and, unlike journalists and perhaps a national community engagement manager, have seen players away from the public’s gaze. It’s likely they’ve had the opportunity to observe quite a number of indigenous players in the stress of training as well as in games. They’ve formed the view, based on their experience, that a change to a two-and-two bench could make it harder for indigenous footballers to get drafted.

They are NOT saying that clubs should not draft indigenous players, although you’d hardly know that from the inflamed criticisms being thrown at them.

Mifsud’s most egregious error is to relate “the statistics on longevity of primary-listed [indigenous] players in the AFL over the last five years.” All very nice Jason, but we’ve had one year of a three-and-one bench, prior to which coaches have been interchanging at ever-increasing rates. Quite how these statistics relate to what Roos and Hird said might be an impact of the proposed two-and-two bench eludes us.

Sure, Adam Goodes is an astounding athlete as Mifsud reminds us, but he, Lance Franklin, Andrew McLeod, Nicky Winmar and Peter Matera are as exceptional amongst indigenous players as Gary Ablett (both of ‘em), Wayne Carey, Nathan Buckley and Chris Judd are amongst non-indigenous players. So what?

“The logical application of [Hird and Roos’] statement is that we should manage out Cyril Rioli, Liam Jurrah and Chris Yarran because they can't run 15 beep tests and revert back to the dark — and not so secretive — days of race-based draft selections. Of course, this is absurd.”

 

It certainly is absurd Jason, because it’s your ‘logical’ conclusion, not theirs.

Enough! Stop building straw men that you can knock down in virtuous dudgeon.