We haven’t even reached Christmas and already there is devastating news for some players.

News that David Rodan has done an ACL in an innocuous handball drill is very sad. Rodan is one of aussierulesblog’s favourite players and we wish him a successful recovery and return to AFL in 2011.

The news does prompt us to wonder whether modern players’ bodies are too highly stressed. It’s understandable when we see a knee pushed and pulled in unnatural directions and an ACL diagnosis results. All too often recently, it seems, ACL injuries are the result of apparently-innocuous, single-player events.

As a Bombers fan, the one that comes most clearly to mind is David Hille’s injury in the early stages of the 2009 Anzac Day clash. Hille, twenty metres clear of any opponent and not under pressure in any way, takes a medium-sized leap to mark a pass from a teammate and, upon landing, immediately clutches his knee.

Matthew Richardson’s ACL injury in 1996 (I think), was similarly innocuous.

In the quest for ever-greater levels of fitness and agility, perhaps we are driving these human bodies to breaking point?

One would hope that the running joke that the referral system in the second cricket Test has become would be cause for Adrian Anderson to rethink his proposal for a third goal umpire to check contentious scoring adjudications during the 2010 pre-season AFL competition.

Cricket, with its natural space for reviewing decisions, has got a technical system that delivers at least as much uncertainty as the blokes in white shirts standing at either end of the pitch.

Trying to insert an obviously similarly flawed system into the hurly burley of an AFL contest, without the flawed assistance of a snickometer or a hotspot camera, is a recipe for disappointment. Give it away now, Adrian.

While Andrew Demetriou may have gilded the lily talking up the possibility of a cancelled AFL season should Australia win the right to host the FIFA World Cup, it’s clear that a country where “football” runs a poor fourth, at least in commercial terms, amongst winter sporting codes simply should not be in the race in the first place.

I suppose it’s laudable that Frank Lowy and friends are generating recognition internationally for Australia. There may even be a little coin to be added to the GDP by a few international visitors, were we to host.

Lowy and his fellow promoters of the bid must have known at the time they launched the bid that there would be a clash of calendars and venues. The time to work out what could and could not be done scheduling-wise was before the bid was submitted.

Instead we have this unseemly battle of the codes via the media in response to FFA’s ambush. Tell FFA and FIFA to stick their tournament where it fits — somewhere where “football” is a religion.

A report today that a third goal umpire with access to television coverage and a comms link to on-field umpires will scrutinise goal umpiring decisions through the 2010 pre-season competition raises many questions.

As is the AFL’s modus operandi, this proposal is using a sledgehammer to crack a wheat grain. Footy operations boss Adrian Anderson says only three goal umpiring decisions across 2009 were later assessed as incorrect. Three of how many? Had one of those incorrect decisions not occurred during a close Grand Final, you can be assured we wouldn’t be having this experiment in 2010.

The biggest, but by no means the only, problem with this proposal relates to timing. Anderson says the third umpire will be able to assess TV coverage of replays, but if the ball has been bounced, or play has otherwise restarted, there would be no redress.

Let’s think for second Adrian. One team is awarded a goal in error, so the third umpire has all of the time until the ball is returned to the central field umpire and it is bounced to assess whether or not the decision was correct. The other team scores a goal that is adjudged a behind by the goal umpire, but the full-back grabs a ball from the bucket and has kicked out again — restarting play — within a few seconds. For the second team there’s no chance of the decision being overturned because play has restarted.

Next we need to ask whether the third umpire will have the capacity to ‘order up’ specific footage or angles to help in making a judgement, or will they be subject to the director’s whims? You don’t need to be a ‘rocket surgeon’ to see there’s room for some spurious activity here.

Look, Anderson has condemned his proposal out of his own mouth. Three incorrect decisions in a season! For crying out loud!!

Each year there’s the same preoccupation with draft picks — which player your club picked first and how much of a ‘gun’ player they’ve been in TAC or what amazing beep tests they did at draft camp.

This is all nonsense. We’ll know in five years whether these kids will make the grade, and no amount of fervent prognostication will make a scrap of difference.

Naturally, the kids in the 2009 draft are better prepared than recruits have been before for adapting to the tough and uncompromising world that is AFL football. But the truth is that for every Daniel Rich who makes a sizeable splash in their first season, there are dozens of others who’ll sink like stones after a few games.

Lest anyone be thinking I’m talking through my hat, just remember that the Bulldogs’ Brian Lake was taken at pick 71 of the 2001 draft, while Tim Walsh was taken at pick 4 in 2002 for the same club. Yeah, that’s right. Tim who?

Amongst all the draft-related news and seemingly endless — and pointless — draft prognostications over recent weeks, there was one truly startling piece of information.

In a story likening Richmond’s current plight to Geelong’s at the turn of the century, Jake Niall noted that Richmond did not have a full-time recruiter on staff in 2005. You don't need to be a ‘rocket surgeon’ to be aware that the Tigers have burned almost countless recruiting opportunities in the past couple of decades, not to mention letting go a player like David Rodan. It beggars belief that a club in the AFL competition could have its head so far into the sand that recruitment was not a number one priority. And it’s not like they were travelling well at the time.

Of course, recruiting is a subjective process at the best of times. With the benefit of hindsight, one can wonder how the Tigers selected Deledio and Tambling ahead of Franklin and Roughhead — faith in Richo was probably a big factor. Recruiters spend time watching games to evaluate a wide selection of potential recruits — unlike the ubiquitous draft previews that litter the blogosphere — but, ultimately, make subjective judgements based largely on perceptions of their list’s future weaknesses. In short, none of this is an exact science. Nevertheless, Richmond’s situation in 2005 is extraordinary.

Matthew Ricardson's retirement should be seen as a filip by Richmond fans, though I am sure most will see it as an extremely sad day. For AussieRulesBlog it’s a very sad day — one of my favourite whipping boys is no more!

Let me say, yet again, that Richo’s love for and dedication to the Tigers has never, ever been in question, and he should be applauded for this. The sad truth, however, is that Richo has, for most of his career, been a disastrous on-field role model for less exalted teammates.

I feel for Damien Hardwick today. He will have to maintain a solemn outward demeanor appropriate to the ending of such a famous career, but his heart must be bounding with joy at losing a significant millstone in his quest to return the Tigers to consistently competitive football.

No longer will messages about clinical skill execution be thwarted by a favourite son dropping clangers as if he were re-enacting Hansel and Gretel’s stroll into the magic forest. Forwards can now be expected, nay required, to kick goals like professionals without the most famous current forward squandering chances like a gambling addict at the tables at Crown Casino.

Today also marks the passing of the last of the triumvirate of mediocrity that anchored the Tigers to the middle or lower reaches of the competition for most of the last two decades — Wayne Campbell, Matthew Knights and, now, Matthew Richardson.

As an interesting postscript, just as the Tigers will, I believe, be able to make a new start with Richo removed from the playing group, Collingwood may find a similar benefit in the retirement of that endurance athlete, Anthony Rocca. Both have, I think, for quite different reasons, held their teams back.

With media speculation over the future of two members of the Bombers’ leadership group, I’ve been thinking a bit more deeply than usual over player contracts, changing clubs, and so on.

From the supporters’ perspective, we’d love every player on the club’s list to love the club as much as we do. Only the callow supporter changes clubs. For the rest of us, we are there through thick and thin.

For the players, however, things are more complex.

• We’re talking about their job — and a job that can set them up for the rest of their lives, if they’re a bit canny. 
• There’s clearly some considerable caché among ex-players for one-club players. We hear ambitions to be a one-club player too often, especially from players who have clearly forsaken potentially greater success at other clubs, for it to be a furphy.
• Coaches and clubs do their best to indoctrinate players with the notion of loyalty to their mates.
• Many players are connected to supporters and feel a sense of obligation to them.
• Players put their bodies in harm’s way while wearing a club’s guernsey.
  
• To have reached AFL level, players are pretty driven individuals with a keen sense of ambition for success.