Plugger35
The umpires are always right!
- Sep 27, 2008
- 135,093
- 155,359
- AFL Club
- St Kilda
- Other Teams
- Chelsea, Black Caps, Subiaco
Sometimes you do. Plenty of pub fights start over something as innocuous as a bump leading to a spilled drink. Raised voices, push and shove and before you know it someone is going full Richie Vandenberg. But the context is different and there isn't some pub umpire watching proceedings ready to penalise the respective parties. Of the niggling and scragging I've seen to just WC players over the years (happens to all teams, but you can only see so much on TV) Brayshaw on Gaff would've registered somewhere between 0 and 5 out of 10. Miles short of Liberatore on Cousins etc.
Symptomatic of 2018. The next Cameron, Bugg, Gaff, whoever will cop the same outrage. Or more. If Gaff got 8 weeks the lynch mob will be calling for the next guy to get 10 or 12. You'd think at some level Gaff got off easy in the public eye because he's a choirboy, hard to imagine there would be another level of outrage had some dirty player done it. The current WC side is pretty dull but Chris Masten would've been in the stocks by 3QT - and that's just from the WC fans. Some villain like Sicily, oh boy wowee.
Steven Baker probably would've got a lifetime ban for a similar incident, considering he got a 12 week ban for a few jumper punches and a hand slap.