AFL know-nothings take free shot at league
Article from: The Sunday Mail (Qld)
By Mike Colman
July 19, 2009 12:00am
IT was four years ago. Round 3 of the AFL season and the Lions were playing a televised match against St Kilda.
The Saints' golden boy Nick Riewoldt fell awkwardly and broke his collarbone. As he tried to recover a long way from the ball, Lions players Chris Scott and Mal Michael took turns to shoulder-charge him until the 22-year-old collapsed in agony. He was helped from the field and sat weeping on the sideline.
I wrote a column at the time saying it was a bad look for the AFL. That it was brutal and bullying and thuggery. Those who know a lot more about Australian football than I do -- and that is pretty much everyone who follows it -- suggested I shut up and get back into my tree.
"It's just part of the game," I was told.
Fair enough. If that's what they reckon, I have to believe them. But it was still a bad look for the game.
Just as the closing minutes of Origin III were a bad look for rugby league. If you don't know anything about the game.
I reckon the worst thing to come out of Origin wasn't the sight of Brett White landing one on Steve Price's chin. It wasn't Justin Hodges calling out Trent Barrett or Mick Crocker trying to get his hands on Michael Ennis.
It was the free shot it gave to every know-nothing supporter of other codes who have taken great delight in sinking the boot into rugby league.
At the risk of being labelled a copy-cat, it's just part of the game.
It's not a part that happens every week or even every season. There hasn't been a scene like that for the best part of a decade. But occasionally it happens.
Like in 2005 when Mal Michael and Chris Scott cruelly targeted -- or as Michael put it "tested out" -- Riewoldt's shattered collar-bone.
I read two columns by AFL writers on Friday in which they said incidents such as the toe-to-toe fight between White and Price didn't happen in their game.
They're probably right. When Barry Hall smashed Brent Staker and Ben Rutten he wasn't standing in front of them. They weren't able to protect themselves. They never saw it coming.
Both writers boasted of the way Hall had been forced out of their game earlier this month. Congratulations and welcome to the real world. Rugby league got rid of Les Boyd and Bob Cooper 25 years ago.
One writer said the two minutes at the end of Origin III illustrated why rugby league would never spread outside Queensland and NSW and take root in that civilised haven of brotherly love, Victoria.
That's the same Victoria which was sickened this week by vision of an innocent young man being beaten senseless in a Melbourne fast food outlet.
The other columnist went so far as to use that shocking incident as a means to ask: "Is what we saw in Brisbane on Wednesday night linked to some of the stuff that goes on in our streets?"
It's a fair question, but it would be a lot fairer if he included one-off outbreaks of emotion-charged violence that pop up in other codes, including AFL, as well.
Price and White aren't serial on-field thugs who can't control themselves like Hall, Boyd or Cooper. Price said on Friday it was the first fight he'd had in his 14-year career and, after losing in a KO, his last.
Same with Johnathan Thurston, Sam Thaiday, Trent Waterhouse and Ben Creagh, the players who were sent-off, sin-binned or placed on report during the match. They're not dirty. Just passionate.
It was one of those games where the players wanted to win so much and were so swept away in the emotion and intensity of a brilliant night of football that they reacted like . . . well, like footballers.
Despite what those who are death-riding league might say, what we saw on Wednesday night wasn't a cancer eating away at the code's soul. It wasn't even a pimple.
It was just part of the game.
