Have you ever met a sparky that hasn't been zapped once or twice on the job? sometimes s**t does happen too when you chose to play one of the most physical games in the world. I know countless people who don't have office jobs that have followed the guidelines but still managed to get hurt due to circumstance of your job. I mean, planes literally have fallen from the sky and people have died in their hundreds, & we continue to fly planes every day under mostly the same rules and regulations they had prior to the incident. We accept that - sometimes a few campaigners will die in the name of the luxury of flying. In sport, each incident receives is own reaction, reformation etc.
It's not to say i don't support all the effort and work put into protecting the head, its definitely required - but the idea that you can remove it from the game completely without it affecting the core element of the game it already was is baffling. When you continue to change the rules in a massive way just to limit damage by a smaller percentile each time, your core product gets corrupted. If Broad's tackle is a 3 week offence - then i don't know any other sport that would impose that type of punishment on legal move in a game, being performed carelessly. At worst, this tackle is careless. I see no real malice to dump and hurt a player - just a motion to submit him on a 2nd attempt after he resisted the 1st.
Yep, careless play should be punished - but 3 weeks? Anything above 2 should be reserved for deliberate acts to harm or cheat the game.
3 games is the equal to 15% of the season. Do you honestly think this tackle is worth missing 15% of the season/your game-salary?
Broad in hot water after brutal tackle
Nathan Broad is likely to find himself on the sidelines after this sling tackle on Patrick Parnell during the first quarterwww.afl.com.au
Now that you have answered that, just realise that the below happened in the NBA and the player got suspended for ONE game, which equates to 1.22% of the season. The player who was shoved had way longer lasting injuries than the player in the Broad tackle. Morris had severe whiplash & back complications that caused him to miss 30 games & continue to have issues.
CLEARLY, the NBA missed their mark on their suspension - but even based on other incidents in the nba, they are not as prone to suspending players for 10%+ of the season unless they have been caught cheating (drugs) or really gone out of their way to commit a violent act in bad sportsmanship. I honestly don't see Broads tackle as poor sportsmanship - he has never been that type of player & watching the incident, he literally tackled him for 2-3 seconds before dumping him as a last resort. No crows player even confronted Broad after the tackle. Look at the teams reaction to the Jokic/Morris incident.
Intent should be what is judged and punished harshly. Not sure if there is any real proof that Broad had any intent with his tackle as he did it as a last resort to complete the tackle
This. Where do we start to draw the line. You can have zero intent to hurt an opponent but concuss them in a purely football related incident, yet if you hurt an opponent with the intent to do so with the footy within in the area i.e Duggan on Wehr on the weekend which causes Wehr to miss a couple of games then thats acceptable. I personally have no issues with it but intent to hurt an opponent is the same regardless of the outcome and we can't come up with a magical calculation to decide that the head is more important on the basis of one incident. I personally would rather one concussion then a broke collarbone, but in the event I had 5-10 concussions then I would probably prefer it the other way around.
