Boot for AFL thugs

FOOTY’S a rough and tumble game.

We accept it’s a contact sport of intense physicality where often big men collide.

That is one of the many things we love about it.

But occasionally there is an incident that goes beyond the acceptability of all that.

An intentional punch to the face of an 18-year by a bigger, older player that leaves the teen with a broken jaw and off solids for weeks is such an incident.

The footage of West Coast’s Andrew Gaff striking Fremantle’s Andrew Brayshaw is not sporting behaviour — it looks thuggish because that’s what it is.

Little wonder then that punch has reignited the concept of introducing a red card system to AFL and sparked national debates about when the police should be called in on an on-field assault.

Neither of these things are necessarily paths our great game wants to go down.

But expect those debates to keep raging because that hotheaded moment of violence is such a terrible look.

That’s why the punishment for Gaff needs to be, and is likely to be, severe.

The game needs to send a message to the players, and to worried parents wondering whether to put their kids in footy or soccer, that a moment’s fury is not worth it. Control your emotions or get rubbed out for a very long time.

The punch was, Barry Hall aside, the sort of thing we haven’t seen since Leigh Matthews slugged Geelong’s Neville Bruns in 1985. And now Gaff could become the first player charged by police for onfield conduct since Matthews over his assault on Bruns.

Speaking to the Addy today, Bruns said he hoped for Gaffs’ sake that the police did not get involved. He said that happened in his case largely because the football authorities of the time didn’t know what to do about it.

Bruns also had some sound advice for Brayshaw: Get back on the horse and keep playing and build a career outside of the punch.

Now that is some hardearned wisdom.