Goodesy - One Week

[aardvark]

Would you believe.......?

Missed by thaaaaaat much !

[Big Al]

After 212 posts in this thread I demand the cone of silence...

[Big Al]

Missed by thaaaaaat much !

What some old girlfriends used to say to me all the time.

[Triple B]

What some old girlfriends used to say to me all the time.

Admit it, you'd love to tell the rest of that joke, wouldn't you...lol

[Beerman]

I think the long and short of it is he wouldn't have missed a week except he had points hanging over. He would have just been reprimanded which is what should have happened ( at most). However, with a poor record, its his own fault. Not for this incident so much, but the previous one against the Cats ( which i agree is not on) and whatever incident in the previous 12 months that left him with lingering points. Its a shame a 'nothing' incident led to a 1 week suspension, but the fact is it wouldnt have had he had a clean record. The stupid incident against the Cats has essentially cost him two games.

Same situation as when Buddy Franklin got rubbed out for a very soft bump a couple of years back. The Hawthorn fans were up in arms, but the charge actually reflected the level of the bump and degree of negligence and it was only the carry-over points from a previous incident which resulted in a suspension. It makes sense - repeat infringers are punished more severely.

[ernie koala]

The exclamation mark to the discussions this evening on AFL360. Firstly, while going through each of the games, they nothing about the Swans Roos match-up other than the fact that Goodes would be missing. Why not focus on who would be playing. Then they asked their two panel guests what they thought about Goodes' action - the guests being Barry Hall and Cameron Mooney. But the best bit was when they asked Bazza if he were still captain at the Swans, what advice he would give Goodes...

Yes, I too watched it all play out with lots of head shaking and jaw wide open.
I particularly liked it when they asked BBB what he thought of the incident...His response....with a straight face...."hmmm doesn't look good".
What a farce!

[Nondo]

Back to this old chestnut just to round out the argument -

1. What makes sliding in with the knees on its own rough conduct ? Surely sliding in with the knees could only be rough conduct if there is some sort of damage caused. Lets say both players slid in with their knees (as they did) but both arrived at the ball at exactly the same time. Is it then still rough conduct by both player and in any respect why should the person who just happens to slid in first be seen as the victim if they did the same action?

True that there's no charge without impact. Sliding on its own is not rough conduct. If Goodes missed Surjan there was no offence, just as if Barry Hall had have missed Staker there would have been no offence of striking (there likely would have been an offence of attempted striking). The question of whether there is a charge of rough conduct depends on whether there is impact. The level of impact is assessed as high, medium or low - this goes to the grading. In the Surjan case the impact was low, in the Rohan case they impact was high. It's not a question of 'what is the damage', strictly speaking, but rather 'how high was the impact' although the AFL now grade the charge as high or low depending on the damage done as evidenced by a medical report. This is bad law because the guilt of the perpetrator shouldn't depend on how badly the victim is injured, but on how bad the act was. Anyway that's the way they do it.

2.To establish negligence at law , you also have to have material damage as a consequence of the breach of duty . What material damage occured in this case? The player was not materially injured?

We are asking whether Goodes was negligent in this case to establish the mental element of the charge (similar to a criminal charge), not to establish his liability to Surjan. In civil law you are correct, no damage means no case to answer. This is more like a criminal case where there is a physical and mental element. The physical element is doing the act (sliding and making contact). The mental element is negligence / recklessness / intent. If the Tribunal fail to establish a duty of care, Goodes cannot breach it, cannot be negligent, and is not guilty. This is where the AFL's 'duty of care' concept comes in - they say that there is a heightened duty of care where a player is in a vulnerable position. This means people that bump a guy with his back turned, bump a guy's head over the ball, or slide into a player, can be guilty by negligence. The Tribunal accepted that Goodes had a duty of care to Surjan - it was a line ball call and that's why the Swans though they could overturn it.

3. What situation on the field where body contact occurs would the duty of care not arise. In any single situation of contact on a field there will be a forseeability of injury, you would have done the act, there will be a player in the vicinity. Duty of care therefore in a footballing context will always be a foregone conclusion when associated with any charge as it is almost impossible to dispute that such a duty didnt exist.

The duty of care arises (especially) when the opponent is vulnerable. It's quite a good term for it in that situation - in most cases you don't have to take special care of your opponent, in those cases you do because it's not really a fair fight. The AFL wants the game to be clean and I accept that the game should reward players who get to the ball first and put their head over it, and shouldn't reward players who exploit a dangerous situation to hurt their opponents. There are a lot of wrinkles in the implementation, and questionable results eg the Goodes and Franklin decisions. But the point is the AFL is trying to regulate the game to achieve a legitimate outcome.

The question for those that went mental about the Goodes decision is this - would you prefer that players change their technique so that Gary Rohan's leg doesn't get broken, assuming of course this is possible, or would you prefer to let players slide in and accept that a few broken legs and shattered careers are an unavoidable consequence.