Some balance to the reporting

[Doctor J.]

After listening to that stupid dumb ass of a journalist Caro Wilson last night on Footy Classified, its hard to believe that some logic and perspective can come out of the same stable

http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/sympathy-for-the-devil/2008/04/13/1208024993057.html

[CureTheSane]

I enjoyed this part....

Brace yourselves, too, for the barrage of "what about the children?" correspondence, as if next Saturday's Auskick clinics are going to be turned suddenly into de facto boxing rings.

I'd love to know just how many of those parents who will no doubt be penning letters of outrage to The Age preaching about violence and vowing never to let their sons play Australian football would ever really have been party to them doing so anyway.

[AnnieH]

But back in the real world, the issue now is how the match review panel system survives this. Under the MRP guidelines, even a ruling of an intentional strike, high impact and high contact on Hall's strike, given his lack of a conviction in the past five seasons, means four games, and with the guilty plea he has already offered, just three.

That clearly isn't going to satisfy the masses. But to refer an incident directly to the tribunal, the MRP has to conclude it was severe. As dramatic as the Hall-Staker footage appears, the West Coast player hasn't had his jaw broken, and may even play next weekend. If this goes straight to the tribunal, so, logically, will every incident in which the player offended against suffers some serious physical damage.

An MRP-imposed sanction will bring inevitable "soft on crime"-type cries. But a tribunal hearing and the inevitable media circus won't exactly be music to an image-conscious AFL's ears either. Ears that are already surely burning from a tide of hysteria, and the bleatings of self-appointed moral police who, as usual in these matters, shoot first, ask questions later.

Love it.
Love the article too.

[Cher]

Excellent article