Last Thursday, before a ball was bounced for the season proper, the AFL emailed clubs warning that players risked a report and suspension if they pushed opponents in the back in marking contests and the player got injured.
It seemed pre-emptively sound – jump on an issue before it spiralled. But it was not. In fact, it was six years in the making.
No.1 draft pick Sam Lalor was concussed and left with a fractured jaw after this incident against the West Coast Eagles.Credit: Fox Footy/Kayo
What had prompted this missive was the apparent spiralling in the off-season of the number of players pushing opponents out in marking contests, and not only not being punished for it with a free kick, but causing the pushed player to be injured.
The most glaring one was in the off season when West Coast’s Reuben Ginbey pushed No.1 draft pick Sam Lalor in the back so he could run him under the approaching ball and hopefully skip away out the back of the pack with the ball. Instead, Lalor stumbled into another player and cracked his jaw.
There was nothing malicious in what Ginbey did. He was just trying to – what is the phrase, commentators? That’s it, “run him under the ball” – and get away out the back.
But he didn’t actually “run him under the ball”. What Ginbey did was push Lalor in the back.
Then, in quick succession, there were incidents that left Lions player Brandon Starcevich, Bulldog Jordan Croft and Saint Mitch Owens injured in similar circumstances.
The AFL rightly didn’t like the injuries but chose to address the effect of the problem, not its cause.
The problem stems from the fact that players routinely push opponents in the back in marking contests and are not penalised for it. More players are getting injured from pushes because the reward is greater than the risk.
The AFL sent the email to the wrong group of people. It would have been better off sending advice to the umpiring department to pay more free kicks for pushes in the back; then we might not need the threat of suspension. This is not a sledge of umpires, it is a criticism of how the push-in-the-back rule has been allowed to fade away.
Kieran Briggs is stretchered from the field.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
On Sunday, it looked terrible when GWS’ Kieren Briggs was trolleyed off the ground after being pushed by Collingwood opponent Darcy Cameron as Briggs was losing his footing and his teammate Sam Taylor was flying back the other direction.
Cameron had his eyes on the ball and there was no malicious intent. He was rightly not cited by the match review officer. But in the chaos of the pack, his push contributed to Briggs’ fall. Not only could the Briggs-Cameron incident have resulted in a catastrophic injury to the GWS ruckman, it also came after the AFL’s warning and the slew of pre-season injuries.
The point is, the AFL would not need to be sending warning emails about suspensions if there were more free kicks for pushes in the back paid in the first instance.
The AFL’s memo to clubs last week cited the statistic that 1.5 free kicks per game were paid last year on average for either “marking contest push out (unduly pushing a player out) or marking contest push in the back”.
Seriously? One and a half per game! They could pay that number in the first quarter of every game.
Since the AFL dropped the hands-in-the-back rule at the end of 2018, the push rule started to fade away. That doesn’t make that decision wrong, but it did open the door to what happened next – a gradual, six-year erosion of a once-common rule. You will see more duffle coats at games now than in-the-back free kicks.
Scrapping the mandatory free for hands in the back was correct because, like all mandatory sentences, it was overly punitive and didn’t work. But hands in the back should still be a good signpost that a push might happen.
Presently, an incidental brush of an arm over a shoulder that is completely inconsequential to the contest is more commonly punished than a shove in the back, which is tremendously consequential to the contest.
Mitch Owens injures his shoulder after being shoved in a pre-season contest.Credit: AFL Photos
The hands-in-the-back rule was meant to make things easier for umpires. And it did. It just didn’t make the game better.
Taking the rule away made a game that’s difficult to umpire even harder because it threw another judgment call back to the umpires. That’s a shame, but there has to be a better balance than what we have now.
TV commentary is complicit in this current state of affairs. Commentators, among them former players, gaslight the audience as they tell us what we might have thought was a push was nothing of the sort. Terrific body work. He’s so clever in the marking contest. Worked him under the ball brilliantly. Such great strength.
And what about the push?
What push?
So here’s a much shorter email to the AFL: start paying push-in-the-back frees more often, and you will have fewer players being pushed. And maybe fewer players being injured from being shoved into contests.
