Safety of players must come first

OUTSIDE THE SQUARE

with Brett Geeves

IN Round 22 of 1978, Robbie Muir hit Dennis Collins with a roundhouse for the ages.

The footage of the incident became iconic for a generation of VHS users through its release on Sensational Seventies, a VHS that defined many father/ son relationships.

Maybe it’s unfair to single out Muir. I mean, he is not rowing a one-man boat when it comes to the biff, bumps and brawls on those VHS tapes.

Leigh Matthews melting Neville Bruns’ face and jaw in an extreme off-the-ball incident had Lethal being charged with assault by police. Mark Jackson laid some down, and did it in a fashion that was entertaining. We cheered him for his outrageousness.

But none did it better than Muir. His theatrics, aggression and delivery will never be equalled. And it’s why his cult hero status is an odd admiration. It is the admiration for the biff, sold to us by those bloody VHS tapes, that has set us up poorly to deal with the changes to the way the modern game is adjudicated.

For knocking out Dennis Collins, with a hit that the modern world has rightly labelled a “coward punch”, Muir received a four-week suspension.

Tom Hawkins, for jumper punching Dane Rampe with less impact than your very best pick-up line at 5am, was given a two-match suspension.

Zach Merrett received a one-match suspension for a stomach punch on Lachie Plowman.

1978 this is not.

While the AFL are seeing themselves as the moral compass for social issues, the game can’t be seen acting out in a physically ugly manner.

Question: at what point during the first 500 words, or when romanticising over Mad Dog cutting a swath through the league with his fists, did you ever think about the brain of Dennis Collins?

You didn’t. And nor did I. We were too busy revelling in the hardness of “how footy used to be played” weren’t we?

In case you missed it, as I have along the way, the longterm effects on the brain from concussions is a hotter topic for the players than yet another inseason rule change for tummy tapping or jumper punching.

It is why for pinning the arms of Ben Brown, denying him access to the use of his upper body to correctly dispose of the ball and executing a tackle that the in-game decision maker deemed to be perfect by rewarding him with a free kick, Brodie Grundy was given a three-match suspension that was reduced to two weeks with a guilty plea.

The tackle was graded as careless with high impact to the head when those perfectly pinned arms, and the momentum of a combined 210kg, couldn’t stop Brown’s unprotected head from hitting the surface of Etihad Stadium.

And this is where it gets challenging for football the code. While I understand safe imagery needs to be projected in line with the moral compass, at what point does it become detrimental to the foundations of the game?

Tell me, how many careful tackles have you seen in any football game, across any level or age group? None. And it’s why the language of the MRP needs to be changed.

We can all agree there is no place for the level of brutality seen from eras passed.

The physical development of the modern-day player is providing a speed and natural physicality to the game that has the administrators, and the players themselves, extremely concerned about player safety; particularly when it comes to the head and its contents. As the speed of the game evolves, the rules need to bend with it to ensure safety remains the highest point on the agenda.

But at the same time, the game shouldn’t be punishing those players who are simply acting out the very elements of our game that make it a breathtaking spectacle.

Grundy wanted to win the footy with a tough tackle, not hurt Brown, and the game needs to be smart enough to differentiate in penalty between the stupidity in imagery of Hawkins and his jumper fetish and those acts that are crucial to the foundations of our game.