When is it Tough?
When is it Rough?
and
When is it Just Plain Dirty Play?
Okay so the Swans got well and truly trounced in this year’s qualifying Final. The same old problem surfaced as it has done in other years. They just caved in during vital top team games because of a non-performing forward line. The Swans back-line is then left defending a puny low score.
The Swans coaches just have to learn to get their team playing like former underdogs, Richmond. They have perfected attacking the forward with very fast group of players running in a line, playing keepings-off to score time and time again from just in front of goals. Richmond suffered plenty of humility before getting to its present state. Yet there are many of the same players in the premiership team of 2017.
Swans need to find some reliable forwards to help Franklin and change their style of play, that’s for sure.
The Swans versus Giants started and continued with considerable body clashes and man-handling. It’s monotonously regular. Have a look at this previous game.
Was this tough or was it rough?
Clubs insist on their players being ‘strong’ enough to play the game. They have them spending hours in the gym to muscle up.
The trouble is, players have built up their bodies so much, they don’t know their strength. They are capable of picking a player up with one finger and dropping him on his head.
It was games like this when Tippett got the royal treatment and knocked semiconscious. The AFL after that brought in all sorts of laws to protect the players from receiving irreparable damage.
I can well imagine that the AFL’s true reason is that they don’t want a modern day sue case on their hands. The new rules have gone too far.
But having addressed ‘protect the head’ and having the old ‘kicking-in-danger’ rule to protect the player’s hands, etc., along comes Toby Greene with a new class act – raising a stiff leg to push the other player away?
See for yourself:
And, after scrutinising their rules, the AFL gave Greene a game penalty for undisciplined, reckless play. Greene said he didn’t mean to kick him fair square in the mouth to take that brilliant mark!
Bulldust! He knew full well what he was doing and this recent Swans game showed he hasn’t stopped.
See for yourself:
This classic act didn’t change the result of the game but could have changed Newman’s balls, chest or mouth. Greene did it on four occasions during the game because it is still within the rules. The same bloke deliberately trod on the head of Swans player, Heeney, while he was pinned on the ground by another GWS player.
But I suppose we can be thankful that no one was injured by this flying stiff leg and boot. It could have been a downright deliberate thug act like Gaff did to young Brayshaw in an earlier match this year.
See for yourself.
Plenty of niggling goes on in games and players are monotonously swinging stomach punches. But to knock someone down like this? They jail them if it is done in our streets.
Gaff should have been rubbed out for all of next season to stop other players being that reckless.
So too, the stiff leg up with boot spriggs able to irreparably do damage to the opposing player, should be banned from here on.
Why do spectators have to put up with this brutality. Our young kids see it, think it is normal and then go home to copy their favourite player’s DIRTY PLAY.
Yes, despite them being top notch brilliant footy players, Greene and Gaff are both guilty of plain dirty acts. We are there to see the skill of the game and the excitement of whether our team will win or lose.
I’ll settle back now and try to work out who will be in the Grand Final.
Maybe Melbourne versus Richmond do you think?