Three of the best marks I’ve ever seen on a footy field were from players sprinting back with the flight of the ball. If I was trying to explain the appeal of the sport to someone who’d never seen it, I’d show them the marks of Mark Harvey, Nick Riewoldt and Jonathan Brown. But why? I’d probably mumble something about courage and commitment and any of the other cliches peddled by coaches and commentators. The truth is there is something visceral about an act like that, a sort of car crash fascination that gets us out of our seats even more than a screamer or a close game.
It’s a young man’s act. Young men will do silly things under orders and out of fear of embarrassment. One of the first things you notice about older footballers, at least when the prefrontal cortex fully develops, is the different way they assess risk. Even Harvey, as reckless and as fearless a footballer to play the game, had a measure of restraint and self-preservation in his later years.
It’s worth remembering who these men played under. Harvey was a Kevin Sheedy player through and through. Leigh Matthews later told Brown, “Toughness is keeping your eyes on the ball when you don’t know where the pressure is coming from – you conquered your fear”. Riewoldt played under Grant Thomas, who now brings his unique joie de vivre to the Twittersphere, but who as a coach would rewind videotapes and pause on players who had pulled out of a contest.
Writing about this for The Age, former Hawthorn forward Tim Boyle quoted one of Riewoldt’s teammates, Matt Maguire. “You had to be courageous,” Maguire said. “How you played was a reflection of who you were as a person. If you went hard for the ball and didn’t deviate you were a trustworthy, reliable person. If you didn’t, you felt that you weren’t.”
On the weekend, Darcy Byrne-Jones presumably had one thought in his head – “gotta go”. It was pouring rain, his Port Adelaide teammate had overcooked the kick and the defender turned forward ran blindly into Alex Pearce. In handing the Fremantle captain a three-week suspension, the AFL sought to tighten the parameters around duty of care. To the rest of the competition and to footballers of all abilities, ages, and genders, they were saying, “you have to approach a contest differently to what you have in the past”.
We needed this to be tested at the tribunal. And throwing the case out was the right decision. There is very little more that Pearce could have done. It was a good example of how difficult it is for players to exercise their duty of care, and the futility of lawyers neatly summarising football incidents and legislating change.
A better way to avoid these incidents would be to crack down on what Byrne-Jones did. I’m not suggesting he was in any way culpable. The poor bugger did what every junior footballer has been taught and encouraged to do for decades, and he was rewarded with a bout of concussion. But by running back with the flight of the ball, he put Pearce and more importantly, himself, in an impossible position. We’ve moved well beyond the days of Gary Ablett Sr mowing down John Gastev. In 1.7 seconds, Pearce had to factor in a range of variables – a wet ball, an errant kick, a captain’s responsibility to lead by example and a rough idea of “duty of care” that is almost impossible to define, let alone fulfil.
All this happened in the backdrop of an interview from former Adelaide and Collingwood player Paul Seedsman on the ABC. The 33-year-old compared his ongoing concussion symptoms to that of having a stroke. Some days he can’t lift his arms and legs or get out of bed. It’s worth remembering interviews like that each time the AFL cracks down on dangerous acts and we shake our fists and bemoan a game gone woke.
Acts we have valorised for decades now need to be umpired out of the game. As the parameters tighten around head-high tackles and bumps, footballers have changed their techniques, their footwork, the way they gird their torsos, and the way they process risk. The next step would be that the person running at the ball has the right to that space, rather than the person running back with the flight. It would require a rule change and a shift from the people who play, umpire, coach, commentate and support the game. It would make the sport less gladiatorial. But in effect, much like the AFL’s concussion panel, it would be saving the players from themselves.
This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions
