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.

With a disappointing season only minutes behind them, the Saints have made a spectacularly unpromising start to the off season with Ross Lyon’s announcement of four retirements.

Within hours, Steven Baker and Robert Eddy had revealed they had done no such thing.

After the disruptions of the photo scandal and the “seventeen-year-old schoolgirl” over last off-season, AussieRulesBlog would have thought that the club would be making every effort to present a quietly determined and united front to avoid distractions. Not so it seems, or the club’s communications advisers only paused to decide which of the club’s feet they would shoot next.

It will remain to be seen whether the exit of veteran Baker in obviously controversial circumstances will further tear the internal fabric of the playing group. Once rent, it is a (football) generational change exercise to repair.

Watching the final against the Swans, we took particular note of Malcolm Blight’s observations that Lyon had played one or two extra in defence during the first half, but structured up man on man after half time. The contrast between the Saints’ ineptitude in attack in the second quarter and threatening revival on the scoreboard in the third quarter was marked. Perhaps it’s not too big a call to suggest that the game was lost in the coaches’ box on game day.

The Saints’ denial of a “culture problem” after four young players were suspended and fined for drug and alcohol abuse has more than a whiff of a little Dutch boy with his finger stuck in the dyke about it. Or perhaps King Canute is a more appropriate analogy?

Reporting comments by coach Ross Lyon, The Age writes:

He said St Kilda was already overhauling its development program, so that young players not studying or in full-time work would "earn or learn" to avoid "escapism" and depression.

Overhauling? The requirement for study or work wasn’t in place already?

Perhaps CEO Michael Nettlefold is correct. It’s not a culture problem. Perhaps it’s just ordinary management. It’s not like there hasn’t been a plethora of poor management over the past few years for the Saints.

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!

No, not a cricket story about Mitchell Johnson bowling a no ball!

It’s typical of self-appointed guardians of society like Neil Mitchell that they take it upon themselves to flout conventions, regulations or orders protecting the identities of those suspected of some criminal activity.

Of course, there’s more than enough precedent in everyday media. Television news broadcasts routinely name people being arrested or being taken into custody, often even when pixellating their images.

It’s reasonable to ask why high-profile footballers should be treated any differently.

But the real point is that NO-ONE should have their name broadcast before being found guilty.

This principle is even more applicable in accusations of sexual assault which can turn on the participants’ varying understanding of consent as it applied in the context of the alleged assault.

Let’s be clear that there should be no quarter allowed if the assault is proven to the satisfaction of the law and that the victim must be protected as far as possible from further harm.

But let’s also be clear that those accused or suspected of sexual assault are entitled to not bear the opprobrium if the case is not proven.

For at least some sections of the community, Steven Milne, Leigh Montagna and Andrew Lovett will be considered sexual predators whether charges were/are sustained or not.

It is reasonable and right to guard the identity of the females involved in these cases. It should also be reasonable and right to similarly guard the identities of the males involved up to the point that they are convicted.

No conviction, no ‘name and shame’.

“What the hell were your blokes doing on a booze cruise in the middle of pre-season?” One hopes the start of Adrian Anderson’s conversation with Greg Swann and Stephen Kernahan carried some of this tone.

It is reported that the AFL will not impose further sanction on the Blues over the events of and surrounding the booze cruise.

Indeed, it’s difficult to see what more the AFL could have done. Despite the stupidity of the cruise in the first place, despite the club captain’s participation raising questions about his leadership, despite a young rookie being cajoled into a drinking “game” and despite Carlton’s somewhat equivocal response, this has mostly been a PR issue for the League. Notwithstanding the negative aspects of the publicity, League HQ will be secretly quite pleased that the whole issue of alcohol abuse at the elite level has had such an extensive public hearing.

It’s all but inconceivable that anyone even remotely interested in elite Aussie rules will not have heard the furore and formed the opinion that the Carlton guys shouldn’t have been on the cruise, shouldn’t have drunk so much and shouldn’t have abused the trust Levi Casboult’s parents placed in the club. That’s a pretty powerful message that has now had a good couple of months’ airing, importantly, through the generally ‘boozy’ summer and festive seasons.

Only time will tell if the Blues are able to generate some significant change to their inner culture. About the only person who might be pleased would be one B. Fevola — grateful, for once, to be out of the spotlight!

Is it only here at Aussierulesblog-Central or is this off-season dragging interminably?

Each day we turn to the sports pages, hoping they’ll be filled with all of the panoply of footy, but we’re forced to wade through page after page of horse racing (yawn), yachting (falling asleep) and tennis (fast asleep), not to mention ‘fudball’ (comatose). Only occasionally is there a contribution to the footy landscape, and even more occasionally, it is meaningful. Such, however, is the case today.

Emma Quayle’s piece on the AFLPA draftee induction program provides a longer than usual glimpse into the week-long effort to appropriately equip the stars of tomorrow to meet expectations.

One can imagine there are many, many massively unmemorable moments through this induction program, and it’s asking a lot of young men chosen for athletic qualities rather than academic to have them all take it all in. Nevertheless, Quayle picks out some seminal moments to highlight.

Bachar Houli relates how teenaged teammates were unexpectedly considerate and interested when he asked for quiet for his prayers. Harry O’Brien counsels these young men to find out why they’re doing a clinic and who and how they’ll be helping. All good stuff.

We’re also told that AFL players drink far more alcohol than their general public equivalents — a surprise to the innocence of these brand new draftees. “When an AFL player gets into trouble, [Steve] Alessio [AFLPA general manager of player development] reminds them, alcohol is usually a factor.” It’s not mentioned whether Carlton rookie Levi Casboult was called upon to provide first-hand corroboration of Alessio’s claim.

Quayle ends her report with quotes from a couple of draftees:

''It shows that you can't be ignorant, that you have to think about every little thing that you do,'' said Adelaide ruckman James Craig, and Andrew Hooper, a Western Bulldogs rookie, agreed.
''It's not good enough to say, 'I didn't know', because now we do,'' he said. ''We've been told how it is and we're the ones who have to put it in place and make the most of the chance we have.''

It’s not news that the AFL Players’ Association (AFLPA) provide a primer for all recruits to AFL clubs each year.

In this report, AFLPA general manager of player development, former Bombers big man Steve Alessio, says,

“ ‘We want to make sure they're fully aware of their off-field responsibilities and obligations [and] don't jeopardise their career by making bad judgments when they're newcomers to the game.’ ''

“Up to 90 per cent of the players will join a year-long program over 22 sessions that deal with budgeting, finance, nutrition, public speaking, defensive driving and more.”

The Brad Scott Mantra

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the culture of the playing group at Carlton remains heavily influenced by the Fevola years. The former Blues spearhead demonstrated his inability to consume alcohol responsibly on one of footy’s biggest stages, but that was merely the latest in a series of alcohol-related incidents over his career. As the Blues’ best player over a good part of that time, it seems his indiscretions were treated in a manner designed to minimise fallout for both player and club.

News today that 19-year-old Carlton rookie, Levi Casboult, was coerced into joining a drinking game on a so-called ‘booze cruise’, pitting himself against a senior Carlton player, aren’t a good look for the club. There will be many 19-year-olds in the community who would have given the senior player a run for his money, but that’s not the point.

Let’s get past the notion of responsible consumption of alcohol. The fact is that these men are paid as elite athletes; their clubs and their clubs’ fans expect them to perform at their elite best.

For an elite athlete, alcohol consumption to the point of being detained by police, or alcohol consumption sufficient to break down inhibitions and resulting in actions that attract the attention of the police should be an absolute no-no.

Players aren’t recruited for their raw brainpower. It’s physical capabilities and associated ‘footy smarts’ that recruiters look for. As a work colleague noted to aussierulesblog today at a Xmas luncheon, clubs must look at a player with a brain as an unexpected bonus.

Aussierulesblog has defended players in the past, arguing that some can’t handle the mantle of role model that the community is so keen to crown them with. Notwithstanding that Carlton is not our favourite club, there’s something about these latest incidents that yells a message that these men don’t consider themselves as elite athletes. That’s not good enough.

Let’s also recall that players have their ‘mad Mondays’ where much is forgiven. It’s an opportunity to let their hair down and the community — certainly the footy community — are likely to allow them a little more leeway in that context.

We have to ask what these players thought was going on. This is not the end of the year for them — that’s mad Monday! We’re six or seven weeks from the first (semi-)serious hitout of the season and the Carlton boys are playing drinking games on a booze cruise! Discipline? Leadership? Fevola?

Most readers will, we are sure, recognise the metaphor of a fish rotting from the head — that is, poor or missing leadership is eventually reflected in the rest of the entity. Carlton’s tacit acceptance of on-field scoring opportunities over leadership and team orientation continues to reap its just desserts.