Every now and again an AFL footballer demonstrates a chivalrous attitude that renews AussieRulesBlog’s faith in the higher ideals of sport.

Some years ago, Essendon’s David Hille turned back from following the ball to check on an injured Jamie Charman and call Brisbane trainers to his aid. More recently, a couple of players whose names we don’t recall have, similarly, called trainers to aid opponents who have been concussed in contests for the ball.

And then there’s the win-at-any-cost attitude that sees Lee Montagna and Justin Koschitzke ‘test’ a clearly incapacitated Ed Curnow’s shoulder by bumping him as players milled around at the end of a quarter. There are plenty of precedents. Jack Riewoldt attempting to punch Tayte Pears’ injured hand, Steven Baker punching Steve Johnston’s injured hand, Mal Michael bumping Nick Riewoldt’s injured shoulder, Steven Kretiuk and Matthew Lloyd’s hand, . . .

Some readers will be thinking as they read this, it’s a man’s game and what happens on the field stays on the field, or if you run out onto the field you’re effectively saying you’re fit enough to compete. Well we agree with these sentiments — up to a point.

Sport should be about striving for ideals, about competing fiercely in the contest and respecting your opponent. The modern game appears to be leaning toward, figuratively, kicking an opponent when they’re down and the physically-strong oppressing the physically-weakened.

It’s about respect. Not just respecting opponents, although that’s very important. It’s about respecting yourself and treating others as you would want them to treat you.

Let’s not beat around the bush: Lee Montagna and Justin Koschitzke were unsportsmanlike in their attack on Curnow. There’s no other way to say it. They brought the game, and sport in the wider context, into disrepute.

Such incidents must be made illegal and automatically referred to the tribunal. There cannot be any justification for such attacks outside of a genuine contest for the ball.

Over to you, Andrew and Mike. Do we want our game to promote respect? Or are you happy to see it descending into unprovoked mob violence?

January
Who can forget the fallout from the Blues’ players pre-Christmes ‘booze cruise’? Club culture was our constant companion through a very quiet month.

Reports of AFLPA draftee induction camps gave us hope that, eventually, we shouldn’t have to endure the infantile antics of AFL footballers.

Later in the year, 18-year NFL veteran, Brett Favre, demonstrated this is a forelorn hope with his ‘sexting’.

February
As we prepared to get into the semi-serious stuff of the pre-season competition, the AFL gave bloggers a late Christmas present by revealing its so-called staging sanctions. Confusion reigned with almost everybody expecting players staging for a free kick in a marking contest to be free kicked or reported. Hardly anyone took the trouble to watch the video and understand what the AFL actually intended.

Temporary Saints recruit, Andrew Lovett, who already hadn’t managed to hit it off with his new teammates, found himself facing a rape charge and his new club finding him guilty without the benefit of a trial.

As the pre-season comp got underway, there was plenty of controversy with an apparent video referral of a scoring decision resulting in the goal umpire’s call being overturned. Field umpires had got straight back into stride by paying free kicks based on what they thought had happened rather than what they’d seen and, following the lead of Stephen McBurney, keeping their whistles on a hair trigger.

March
As the FFA seduced some sections of the AFL world with deals to upgrade regional stadiums, the Saints descended into amateur hour with the most inept handling of a grievance against a player in AFL history.

The AFL umpiring department announced their somewhat hilarious sponsorship by spectacle retailers, OPSM, and then proceeded to umpire sensibly — to everyone’s surprise!

Finally, the season proper got underway and we had a bit of a rant about how media select BOGs.

April
The AFL’s long-standing desire to make the game more attractive was thrown into chaos by the proliferation of ugly milling packs where everyone was frightened to take possession of the ball.

We lauded Western Bullgog, Bob Murphy, and his old-fashioned notion of respect for opponents and the Magpies–Saints clash provided a gilt-edged example of disrespect. Not only that, but three other posts focussed on this game. In the meantime, Brendan Fevola managed to tick off another couple of deadly sins on his personal bucket list.

We penned another instalment in our campaign to remove The Giesch, this time for inflexible interpretations.

Melbourne Storm managed to outmuscle every other sport in the world for press column-centimetres for a few days.

May
The month began with us berating Jeff Gieschen. That was a surprise — not.

Some genius at the AFL decided the Demons and the umpires would look spectacular in (nearly) matching uniforms for the Breast cancer game. Demons players couldn’t find their teammates on the field and kept handballing to umpires.

Speculation bubbled along concerning the next big NRL convert to AFL (and will Greg Inglis now make it another?), Jeff Kennett inserted his foot firmly in his mouth over the Ben Cousins doco, followed in close order by senior coach Alastair Clarkson shooting his gob off.

The rushed behind rule became interesting with about sixty thousand definitions being flung around, none of them being one of several employed by the AFL umpires. We finished the month by writing off St Kilda, in the wake of Riewoldt’s hamstring and lamenting the demise of respect and sportsmanship on the AFL field.

June
The holding the ball rule, 50-metre penalties, the advantage rule interpretation, and Jeff Gieschen, occupied much of our attention in June, along with Stephen Baker’s mauling of Steve Johnson and chief umpiring zealot, Steve McBurney’s hair-trigger whistle.

July
Co-operative goal umpiring that still couldn’t get the decision right was in our sights as July began. But we managed to focus on non-umpiring topics as well!

Modern players’ penchant for dribbling the ball through for a goal caught our attention and indicated to us that these players are just show ponies.

Confusing and inconsistent Match Review Panel outcomes gave us some grief, while the emergence of Michael Barlow as a star for Fremantle suggested to us that home-grown, ‘mature’-age recruits would be a better bet than international fancies like the Bombers’ Irishman, Michael Quinn.

Mark Williams’ sacking by Port Adelaide brought to an end to his death of a thousand cuts, while debut umpire Corey Bowen’s five first-half 50-metre penalties against the Bombers had us almost apoplectic with rage. We didn’t have long to wait for retribution as Bowen didn’t feature in the list of umpires for matches played the following week!

Meanwhile, Jeff Gieschen fantasised that his charges umpired “to the DVD” each and every week! Yeah, sure Jeff, and we’re a dead ringer for George Clooney.

The AFL allowed a police-check armband for the Hawks and Saints, but no such leniency for the Bombers and their Clash for Cancer.

Einsteinian concepts of curved space were employed to justify Lance Franklin’s ‘natural arc’ when kicking for goal, to allow umpires not to call play on. Truly one of the more breathtaking rationalisations from Gieschen’s mob for the year.

August
Surprise, surprise, Steve McBurney and over-zealous umpiring caught our attention at the start of the month, but not quite as much as the huge cast we found encasing our left wrist and forearm, courtesy of a fall. A nicely snapped radius bone in what the medical fraternity know as a Colles fracture.

Jeff Gieschen, ignoring previous indiscretions by his charges in making scoring decisions, suggested talk and consultation would be more effective in weeding errors out of goal umpiring than an extra goal umpire at each end. We must conclude that goal umpires are extraordinarily well-paid, since the AFL seem incredibly reluctant to employ another eight of them!

Finally, the talk began that James Hird would replace Matthew Knights as Essendon coach. As we now know, Knights was gone by the end of the month and Hird was being very coy. Smoke? Fire? We remain unconvinced by the denials of preplanning.

September
We highlighted the MRP’s failure to act against blatant staging when Jarrad Waite lodged an Oscar-worthy entry against the Swans, while the AFL world debated the merits of free kicks that are “technically there, but . . .”

An exodus of almost biblical proportions at Brisbane in the previous summer and the failure of the big name import to have a meaningful impact on-field left the club looking rather sickly.

And then there was the Grand Final entertainment — a highlight of our year. This year’s baffling progress of the Premiership Cup from a tethered hot air balloon, through the hands of Tom Harley, to Peter McKenna and ‘Cowboy’ Neale was underwhelming in the extreme.

Fortunately, as we now know, the game itself lived up to all the hype and more. The Saints were a bee’s dick away from breaking their drought, needing only a mildly eccentric bounce of the ball for Steven Milne to goal in the dying seconds and secure the game. Instead the ball bounced at 120° and we were back the following week.

In a fitting finish to the on-field year, in the drawn Grand Final, emergency umpire Steve McBurney spent more time on the field than most of the players.

Oh, and, quite unexpectedly, James Hird was appointed coach of the Bombers, in case you missed that news!

October
Of course, the Grand Final replay imposed footy on October even more strongly than usual, with the ’Woods downing the Saints in no uncertain terms — sadly. AussieRulesBlog has no great affection for the Saints, but any day that Collingwood loses is a good day.

In the biggest jaw-dropping moment of the year, Saints coaches nominated perennial ‘rabbit-in-the-headlights’ Zac Dawson as their best player in the grand final replay.

Bomber Thompson left the Cats, taking the media world completely by surprise, and the impact of expansion teams on the Gold Coast and in Sydney meant we’d have a six-ring circus for the first round of the pre-season competition.

November
Once again taking everyone by surprise, Bomber Thompson was announced as senior assistant to James Hird at Essendon.

A trickle of assistant coaches leaving St Kilda became a flood, leaving coach Ross Lyon to book a telephone booth for the footy department’s Xmas party.

December
The FFA’s soap bubble of optimism for hosting the World Cup was unceremoniously burst, leaving Frank Lowy and Ben Buckley wearing egg makeup.

The Demons released their ‘cutting-edge’ new uniform, to a general yawn, Gary Ablett Jnr let it be known that Bomber Thompson’s problem was that he was trying to coach the football team and, just for good measure, the AFL announced another slew of temporary rule changes for the pre-season competition — some OK, some laughable.

And that’s how it was at AussieRulesBlog for 2010. We look forward to having our regular readers back for 2011 when, once again, we’ll prick a few balloons and renew our campaign to Release the Giesch!

Happy New Year and have a safe, enjoyable and productive 2011. Go Bombers!

Writing for The Age, Bulldog’s star Bob Murphy bemoans the failure of many of his opponents (and teammates) to shake hands before the game begins.

Here at AussieRulesBlog, we’ve searched the cerebral memory banks and we’re quite sure we recall a respectful handshake before the game being very much the rule going back to the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Of course, in those  far-off and less-competitive times, players did not play at something akin to the rutting rites of mountain rams before a game. They simply shook hands respectfully, may even have wished each other good luck, and then waited for the game to commence.

Such is the modern manifestation of AFL that, before the game commences, players engage in violent confrontations immediately upon approaching each other. No doubt there are mental battles being waged and physical dominance being established, but it all seems pretty petty to we old timers.

Players being interviewed are quick to give credit to their opponents, often even when not warranted, yet go through these troglodyte rites to establish superiority before the bounce.

We think respect for one’s opponents is a crucial aspect of modern sport. It marks us out as a more-tolerant, more-civilised society that our AFL crowds are not segregated according to allegiance, but mix freely around the ground. The players should take a lead in emphasising this feature of our sport.

Occasionally we see a player demonstrate respect by showing concern for the welfare of an opponent, as David Hille did in 2008 after a clash with Jamie Charman. Charman was not demeaned by Hille showing concern, and Hille demonstrated a chivalry too little seen in modern AFL.

At AussieRulesBlog, we would prefer to see our heroes demonstrating the chivalric values of the mythical Round Table — accord one’s opponent appropriate respect, but give no quarter, nor expect any, once battle is engaged.

The AFL’s Mick Malthouse-inspired directive that coaches shake hands with umpires preceding the game to show respect to the officials, is a similar acknowledgement and expression of an expectation that the officials will truly and disinterestedly discharge their duties in the coming game. We may not always agree with them, but we respect their efforts and their independence from the contest.

Good on you Bob. We support you wholeheartedly.