MRP / Trib. The Jeremy McGovern TRIBUNAL Thread

[wc_eagles_since86]

There’s a link to a SEN interview with Simpson in the biased media thread and he’s basically said he’s got his head around players getting weeks if there’s an injury

C'mon, we all know what happens if coaches say anything critical towards the AFL / umpiring / MRO / media. They're crucified .. he couldn't say what he really thought, even if he wanted to.

I'll always remember Lleyton Hewitt saying that the general public are stupid. He just said what everyone knows and they hounded him for years about it. Same thing here ..

 

[Numero Uno]

what will happen first

another Eagle gets suspended for tackling or pushing or a Vic based player getting a fine for kicking, elbowing or punching ?

close call but Eagle suspension the favorite

 

[The wily weagle]

Wow. And every single one was a grey as ***** call from the MRP.

And people wonder why we think bias in the AFL exists!

And off the top of my head, I don't believe any of those incidents were even given a free kick at the time either

 

[flyinghi64]

Just watched 360 from Tuesday last night with player takeover.
All 4 current players who were on the panel discussing whether Gov and/or Walters should get off agreed Gov would get off but Walters wouldn't.
Gov was a football action that started inside the boundary, had it of been in the middle of the ground nothing would have happened so it's not his fault the chair was there or that he is so powerful.
Walters on the other hand was a deliberate headbutt which is not a football action and 100% a do not do action no matter the impact you just don't do it.

Once again the current players have no idea of what you can and can't do and get away with.

 

[Obeanie1]

And off the top of my head, I don't believe any of those incidents were even given a free kick at the time either

Gov and Vardy's were frees I recall.

Gov was reported on the spot.

 

[Brave Sir Robin]

Gov and Vardy's were frees I recall.

Gov was reported on the spot.

Rioli's was also paid a free kick well after the incident, probably when the umpire saw it on the screen.

 

[Balls In]

Wow. And every single one was a grey as ***** call from the MRP.

And people wonder why we think bias in the AFL exists!

Aside from our recent inexplicable run of dodgy suspensions, the AFL could at least have endured there wasn't a recent ex Essendon player on the tribunal panel.

 

[Balls In]

Rioli's was also paid a free kick well after the incident, probably when the umpire saw it on the screen.

In other words more than half of our recent suspensions actually resulted in free kicks to us awarded by AFL officials standing 10m away. Nothing grey about that.

 

[Trouto]

The tribunal is not a court of law and it's a waste of money having them on either side in these hearings. It should be forbidden. The law simply does not apply and it becomes a matter of opinion tempered with any bias the tribunal members may have...as we all do.

this.
the MRP is nothing like the law. its mantra of "did the guy get hurt?" is a joke. imagine if common law worked the same way....

Judge: your client is charged with attempted murder. he ran down the street with his gun shooting at the three kids waiting at the bus stop.
Defence: Yes, your honor, my client DID try and shoot these kids, but your honor, my client missed every shot!
Judge: Oh, is that right? Ok, case dismissed, you are free to go.

 

[ziad]

Maintain the rage
its fun

 

[Brave Sir Robin]

this.
the MRP is nothing like the law. its mantra of "did the guy get hurt?" is a joke. imagine if common law worked the same way....

Judge: your client is charged with attempted murder. he ran down the street with his gun shooting at the three kids waiting at the bus stop.
Defence: Yes, your honor, my client DID try and shoot these kids, but your honor, my client missed every shot!
Judge: Oh, is that right? Ok, case dismissed, you are free to go.

I think it shows that it's just pointless engaging QCs to do our work at the tribunal.

In a normal courtroom you have judges who are generally more trained and experienced in law and the construction of logical argument than the lawyers they are listening to. At a tribunal you have a ******* QC making a case to a washed up half-brained footballer, whose only qualification is that they played football.

It's like defending your PhD thesis to a high schooler.

 

[ZergMinion]

While it's pretty annoying to lose players for what are largely accidents in a contact sport, they are at least consistently suspending players when the opponent gets hurt (at least I think they are), so that could lead to a change of player behavior long term.

I think where they're going wrong is not suspending players when the player isn't hurt badly enough to leave the field. That undoes all the good work the original suspensions do by making it utterly confusing as to when you're supposed to provide duty of care to your opponents.

I think you could argue that the current tribunal is no more of a dogs breakfast then previous iterations, though you couldn't really argue that it's not a dogs breakfast.

Guelfi is missing this week, so at least we know Essendon didn't exaggerate their medical report.

 

[Obeanie1]

Just watched 360 from Tuesday last night with player takeover.
All 4 current players who were on the panel discussing whether Gov and/or Walters should get off agreed Gov would get off but Walters wouldn't.
Gov was a football action that started inside the boundary, had it of been in the middle of the ground nothing would have happened so it's not his fault the chair was there or that he is so powerful.
Walters on the other hand was a deliberate headbutt which is not a football action and 100% a do not do action no matter the impact you just don't do it.

Once again the current players have no idea of what you can and can't do and get away with.

Remember 2015 pre finals Hodge elected to bump and literally smashed a players head with the point post and his upper arm.

Nothing. All good. Play on.

 

[Brave Sir Robin]

Remember 2015 pre finals Hodge elected to bump and literally smashed a players head with the point post and his upper arm.

Nothing. All good. Play on.

Didn't he get two weeks?

 

[Obeanie1]

Didn't he get two weeks?

No he didn't. Zero!!

Edit Im wrong he got two.......should have been more.

 

[RookiePick]

Didn't he get two weeks?

He got two weeks from the Hawks leadership group for pissy driving maybe?

 

[Keys]

He got two weeks from the Hawks leadership group for pissy driving maybe?

No zero for that too. Unlike his blood alcohol level

 

[HoneyBadger35]

While it's pretty annoying to lose players for what are largely accidents in a contact sport, they are at least consistently suspending players when the opponent gets hurt (at least I think they are), so that could lead to a change of player behavior long term.

I think where they're going wrong is not suspending players when the player isn't hurt badly enough to leave the field. That undoes all the good work the original suspensions do by making it utterly confusing as to when you're supposed to provide duty of care to your opponents.

I think you could argue that the current tribunal is no more of a dogs breakfast then previous iterations, though you couldn't really argue that it's not a dogs breakfast.

Guelfi is missing this week, so at least we know Essendon didn't exaggerate their medical report.

This is my frustration - it really doesn’t lead to a change in behaviour. The ‘offending’ player doesn’t have as much control over whether the opponent gets hurt as the MRP seem to think. Players can’t sum up in an instant if their legal football manoeuvre is going to result in injury.

You need to stamp out the action, like you say. Going back to the Ablett ones, you’ve got complete non football actions being ticked off because nobody was injured, but that’s more luck than anything. Ablett isn’t using pin point precision to hit players high in a way he knows won’t break their jaw, it’s pure luck. 1cm either way could be massively different, but the AFL ticks off the action because of its outcome.

It’s very hard to take ‘hurting your opponent’ out of the game, when legal moves that result in injury are getting more and more scrutiny applied to them. Guys will get hurt, there isn’t always the need to swing around suspensions.

On Guelfi - he’s missing the game from his rib injury, not concussion, so it’s not pertinent to the case. Gov’s charges were for head high contact resulting in concussion, a concussion that Guelfi has medical miracled his way out of in the days since.

 

[Brave Sir Robin]

No he didn't. Zero!!

That was my recollection too but last week I was looking it up - you're talking about this right?

Hodge cops two-game ban for Wingard hit

No surprise as skipper accepts two-match penalty for Wingard bump

www.afl.com.au

 

[shooshka]

This is my frustration - it really doesn’t lead to a change in behaviour. The ‘offending’ player doesn’t have as much control over whether the opponent gets hurt as the MRP seem to think. Players can’t sum up in an instant if their legal football manoeuvre is going to result in injury.

You need to stamp out the action, like you say. Going back to the Ablett ones, you’ve got complete non football actions being ticked off because nobody was injured, but that’s more luck than anything. Ablett isn’t using pin point precision to hit players high in a way he knows won’t break their jaw, it’s pure luck. 1cm either way could be massively different, but the AFL ticks off the action because of its outcome.

It’s very hard to take ‘hurting your opponent’ out of the game, when legal moves that result in injury are getting more and more scrutiny applied to them. Guys will get hurt, there isn’t always the need to swing around suspensions.

On Guelfi - he’s missing the game from his rib injury, not concussion, so it’s not pertinent to the case. Gov’s charges were for head high contact resulting in concussion, a concussion that Guelfi has medical miracled his way out of in the days since.

This is the problem.

it was absolutely medium impact to the body (of course David Grace went for the acquittal rather than the downgrade).

But it was not medium impact to the head - the player didn't sit a concussion test and went back on 4 minutes later.

High contact low impact, or body contact medium impact - MRO had a bet each way, and tribunal upheld it.

 

[Obeanie1]

That was my recollection too but last week I was looking it up - you're talking about this right?

Hodge cops two-game ban for Wingard hit

No surprise as skipper accepts two-match penalty for Wingard bump

www.afl.com.au

Hmm. He did get two then.

Lucky not to get more and miss finals.

On the level of dangerous that is pretty bloody dangerous. Quadraplegic dangerous.

 

[Brave Sir Robin]

Hmm. He did get two then.

Lucky not to get more and miss finals.

On the level of dangerous that is pretty bloody dangerous. Quadraplegic dangerous.

Well it shows how the AFL likes to shut the gate after the horse has bolted. If Wingard had been seriously hurt Hodge would've been looking at 10+ weeks, instead it ended up being a pretty mild suspension.

The thing I hate is that there doesn't seem to be any loading applied to acts that don't belong on a football field. Hodge had no justification for what he did; he just wanted to hurt Wingard. When you consider that it was both extremely dangerous and not even part of the game two weeks was a joke. Walters ******* headbutted a dude and got off. Mason Redman tried to stomp on Oscar Allen (a week after another stomp had drawn a week penalty) and got nothing. McGovern's push was overly forceful and slightly late at worst, but was a legitimate contest.

Like others have said, the AFL aren't even trying to stamp out any behaviour at all. There is no disincentive to attempt a dangerous non-football act. The context of any incident has no bearing whatsoever on suspensions. If you hurt someone you're ****ed and if they get up you're fine.

 

[ZergMinion]

This is my frustration - it really doesn’t lead to a change in behaviour. The ‘offending’ player doesn’t have as much control over whether the opponent gets hurt as the MRP seem to think. Players can’t sum up in an instant if their legal football manoeuvre is going to result in injury.

You need to stamp out the action, like you say. Going back to the Ablett ones, you’ve got complete non football actions being ticked off because nobody was injured, but that’s more luck than anything. Ablett isn’t using pin point precision to hit players high in a way he knows won’t break their jaw, it’s pure luck. 1cm either way could be massively different, but the AFL ticks off the action because of its outcome.

It’s very hard to take ‘hurting your opponent’ out of the game, when legal moves that result in injury are getting more and more scrutiny applied to them. Guys will get hurt, there isn’t always the need to swing around suspensions.

On Guelfi - he’s missing the game from his rib injury, not concussion, so it’s not pertinent to the case. Gov’s charges were for head high contact resulting in concussion, a concussion that Guelfi has medical miracled his way out of in the days since.

I would have liked to see our legal representation try to separate the two injuries into different report gradings as much as the next guy, but they didn't so we're stuffed. I would also like for our people to have gotten clarification over whether treatment for concussion meant he ever actually failed a concussion test, but now we'll never know.

Stowing all that, McGovern did shove Guelfi after making body contact while close to the boundary line. It is definitely possible not to push quite as hard with the hands because you're close to the boundary. We love our bio-mechanics experts when fronting the tribunal, and we didn't have one on hand this time to say that the shove is a natural motion. Sure the shove is designed to put off the kick, and often results in an out of bounds on the full, but it's still a little bit dangerous when that close to the boundary. In a consistent tribunal system, that shove could be toned down across the competition.

We don't have any consistency barring getting rubbed out when someone gets hurt though, so nothing will change.

Historically plenty of guys have been concussed and played the next week, so Guelfi could have been genuinely concussed. I gave myself a hell of a concussion riding my bike when I was young, and was fine after a few hours. People saying Guelfi wasn't concussed are inferring it from incomplete data. We have missed our chance to get a definitive answer on the subject.

Things I think you can take out of the game with consistent suspension rulings:

Shoving people over the boundary line
Sling tackles
Concussions when trying to spoil with a swinging arm

Things I don't think you can take out of the game with injury induced suspensions:

Head clashes from legal bumps
accidental head contact with the ground during a legal tackle (We should have challenged Jetta's ban)
Injuries in marking contests

I think there's room for more nuance in this particular debate. It would require the AFL to stop collectively scratching themselves and bumping into things though, so this will only ever be a theoretical exercise.

 

[Eaglemaniac]

You know you’re being targeted as a club when the tribunal makes up a ruling that’s never ever been in the history of the sport such as

“ you should have judged how much your opponent weighs before tackling him mr Naitanui”..

 

[wc_eagles_since86]

You know you’re being targeted as a club when the tribunal makes up a ruling that’s never ever been in the history of the sport such as

“ you should have judged how much your opponent weighs before tackling him mr Naitanui”..

I hate it when you're accused of 'tin foil hat' syndrome when in the interview, MC couldn't even articulate why that had happened properly without sounding like a complete fool. It was indefensible.

To me, this single moment is the biggest showing of malice, dare I say corruption, in the MRO. What more proof do you need? Had this been one of another team's players, I would say the same. It was a disgusting, abhorrent decision that will forever taint the MRO and the game in my opinion.