MRP / Trib. 2024 MRO & Tribunal discussion

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My little brother is an Essendon supporter and I’m really very touched about how genuinely happy he sounds over this decision. 😜
 
The potential for head injuries will always be present in Australian rules football so long as the game still has tackling and high marking.

This is the right decision for the game as a whole.
 

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I still think the reasons are wrong. If you tackle someone who has forward momentum it shouldn’t be up to you to reverse that momentum and save their head. As long as you don’t contribute to or exacerbate forceful head contact you should be clear.

I think they also need to review the determination around the contact gradings of low, medium, high & severe, plus how they’ve decided that high impact has this automatic contact grading around “potential to cause injury”

“Potential to cause injury” is such a broad statement & one could argue applies to almost any action on the field but that doesn’t mean the action is reportable - an incident that wouldn’t normally be graded as even “low impact” shouldn’t suddenly be graded as a “medium impact” just because there was high contact

IF Walsh got up groggy, he had to go off the field to be assessed by the doctors for concussion - then you could argue that the tackle by Dangerfield may not have been executed too well. BUT the fact Walsh got up & played on seemingly without concern from the doctors or trainers, with no one even coming out onto the field to check on him would suggest that the head to ground contact was minimal & def not worthy of a medium impact grading
 
I think they also need to review the determination around the contact gradings of low, medium, high & severe, plus how they’ve decided that high impact has this automatic contact grading around “potential to cause injury”

“Potential to cause injury” is such a broad statement & one could argue applies to almost any action on the field but that doesn’t mean the action is reportable - an incident that wouldn’t normally be graded as even “low impact” shouldn’t suddenly be graded as a “medium impact” just because there was high contact

IF Walsh got up groggy, he had to go off the field to be assessed by the doctors for concussion - then you could argue that the tackle by Dangerfield may not have been executed too well. BUT the fact Walsh got up & played on seemingly without concern from the doctors or trainers, with no one even coming out onto the field to check on him would suggest that the head to ground contact was minimal & def not worthy of a medium impact grading
💯

The AFL, try as it might, can’t just change the ordinary meaning of words.
 
Apparently Ralph thinks pinning the arms is an automatic suspension. Just ignore the 500 other tackles this week that involved pinning of the arms.

You can't tackle a player from behind, at speed, without pinning the arms, unless the guy with the ball is doing the chicken dance and you time the intercept to perfection.
 

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Apparently Ralph thinks pinning the arms is an automatic suspension. Just ignore the 500 other tackles this week that involved pinning of the arms.
To be fair to Ralph the AFL Tribunal's reasoning tonight has made it clear that this is the exception and that normally both arms being pinned with contact to the head on the ground would normally be considered rough conduct so it is perfectly reasonable for him to say this is a confusing result for the game. It is a result out of kilter with similar incidents.

Just that in this case PD has successfully argued he did everything he could as a duty of care. I suspect a less strong player attempting the same tackle, let's say Jhye Clark, does not succeed in pulling up Walsh and falls into the same basket as every other player suspended for pinned arm tackles.

Dangerfield pinned both of Walsh's arms and the forward momentum of both players contributed to Walsh's head making forceful contact with the ground.

Dangerfield conceded that he did not release either arm throughout the tackle, and that he could’ve done so.

The pinned arms placed Walsh in a vulnerable position with little, if any, opportunity to protect himself from having his head hit the ground.

It will be a rare, even exceptional case where a player who tackles with significant forward motion, who pins both arms and who could have but does not release one or both arms will not have engaged in rough conduct. This is such a case.

Although not immediately apparent and not truly apparent until all angles and vision and still shots had been carefully considered, the evidence is clear here Dangerfield immediately swung his legs beside and forward of Walsh, and pulled back with considerable force to attempt to prevent Walsh being driven into the ground.

Vision shows Dangerfield managed to pull him back so that at one point Walsh's torso was almost vertical.

Would it have been reasonably possible for Dangerfield to release one or both of Walsh's arms? Yes it would, but that's not the test.

The question is whether it was unreasonable in the circumstances not to do so.

From the considerable care that Dangerfield went to in a short space of time in a fast moving piece of play to do what he could to avoid or minimise injury to his fellow player, we find that this was not rough conduct.
 
Doubt it

There was a lot more support for Dangerfield being cleared compared with the 1 game suspension the MRO gave him
Oh?
I was referring to the Tribunal result, not to the reaction supporting Dangerfield being cleared, of the one game suspension from MRO.

We must be reading different reactions, many salty reactions to Dangerfield being cleared.
 

Jon Ralph always wants the most extreme result, better for the clicks.

Common sense has prevailed here, watching in real time I felt that Danger made an incredible choice in a split second to tackle Walsh and try and hold him up to protect the head, holding him with two hands gives him more control, it was absolutely Danger taking the duty of care to protect Walsh, and he wasn't concussed. That's what you want players tackling, bumping, spoiling to do, have a duty of care, they shouldn't be suspended because the head still hits the ground despite all their best efforts to avoid it, otherwise you have take all those aspects out of the game. And if anything, it's Walsh actions trying to evade that causes the head to hit the ground, shouldn't even have been a free kick.
 
So are you supposed to tackle some big fit bloke travelling at speed by pinning just one of their arms, or are you supposed to pin both then if he starts to go to ground, release one arm in the next split second? And for the latter, it would not necessarily prevent his head hitting the ground.
 
So are you supposed to tackle some big fit bloke travelling at speed by pinning just one of their arms, or are you supposed to pin both then if he starts to go to ground, release one arm in the next split second? And for the latter, it would not necessarily prevent his head hitting the ground.
Rules written by people that haven’t played the game at the highest levels …what could go wrong
 

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