Healy's three step plan to stop ump abuse, gut punches and pack pushes

After reading umpire Hayden Meyers’ account of what happened after the siren last Saturday night, I was left shaking my head… asking myself, could we have mucked this up any more?

Somehow, we’ve turned three very different, but simple scenarios, into a disciplinary fiasco of the highest order. 

So, let’s reflect on what happened.

Number One.

The final siren goes, and both James Sicily, Hawthorn captain, and Tom Barrass, two very senior players, run in a threatening manner directly to Hayden Meyer, verbally abusing him. He feels physically threatened, let alone abused, and reports it immediately to Steven McBurney, the umpire’s boss. 

The AFL’s response: Sicily a $10,000 fine. Barrass a $5000 fine 

Number Two.

Jack Gunston, the latest player to recklessly push out in a pack, with unknown consequences. 

It’s ignored at the time, perhaps unseen, by the two officiating umpires in the area, and nothing is done on the field. It was a pivotal moment in more ways than one that should’ve robbed Mitch Lewis of his mighty mark. 

But most disappointingly, a week after the MRO and football department elected to fine Heath Chapman $2500 for a similarly dangerous incident, they say nothing, they do nothing, and we hear nothing. A result only Sergeant Schultz or potentially Colonel Klink could conceive. 

Number three.

Lachie Neale gets one week for a low-grade gut punch of sorts that had no physical impact. Despite this season, under the current rules, there have been three cases where similar incidents were graded low impact. There should’ve been a fourth. 

So just to repeat, you physically threaten an umpire, that potentially incites the crowd, and you get a meaningless fine for players on over $1 million. 

2. A player potentially, albeit inadvertently, endangers the careers and futures of three-plus players with an excessively illegal action, but not a word from HQ. 

3. You throw an innocuous and questionable gut punch, and despite inconclusive evidence, Neale gets one week, and he now most likely misses a Grand Final. 

It’s a mess by any reckoning, and it needs a serious reset, some immediately, some post-season. 

As a coach, as a commentator, as an administrator or commissioner, you simply can’t talk about concussion, player welfare and safety and be taken seriously in my view, if you only focus on the aftercare.

And to a large degree in recent times, after many rules were changed years ago,  that’s exactly what is now happening. The focus is too often primarily on the need for a HIA. Is he concussed or not? Get him off. Are the doctors in the gun? 

How long will he be out? 

Will there be a suspension after the event?

All worthy of discussion, but it’s hollow if we don’t primarily address the cause and demand change. That’s what’s being missed by most who turn a blind eye to the legitimisation of the shove in the back, and it’s growing potential for serious harm.

Eradicate the cause, you eradicate the problem. And for too long now at AFL level we’ve been reactionary or, worse still, turned a blind eye.

So, in order, for next year, these would be my recommendations to those running the game, if we were serious. 

1 - If you physically threaten an umpire, four-to-six weeks as a base case. 

2 - If you dangerously or recklessly push out a player or players, two-to-six weeks depending on the result. But two weeks minimum for the action, and absolutely no consideration of a fine. 

3 - A continuation of the crackdown on the gut punch as it is, but with application of the common sense approach that the current laws allow.

Sadly, the AFL operatives were dumb to ignore the precedents that allowed them to grade it low given all of the circumstances, setting this ball in motion.

The Tribunal decision was dumber given the strong arguments of Adrian Anderson and the obviously low impact and inconclusive evidence.

But by far the dumbest actor in this whole debacle was Lachie himself for playing on the cliff's edge that he’s peered over before without falling.

This time he fell from a great height like the Coyote in pursuit of the roadrunner. A lesson for all players. 

In the case of the fines for the Hawthorn players, Greg Swann said it was his only available action or reaction under the current rules. That may be so, but I would tend to challenge that, and if Andrew Dillon and new AFL chairman Craig Drummond, and his sleep at the wheel commission, had any sense of perspective, and just how bad this incident was, they would challenge it too, and explore the obvious option of conduct unbecoming, bringing the game into disrepute, for that’s exactly what they did. 

Their actions no doubt helped incite the nuffies in the crowd, who responded with bottle throwing, endangering all in a scene that has left the season with by far its lowest point on the field, arguably the lowest point this century, that immediately diminished its highest point this year, the game itself.

Sam Mitchell was decisive in the aftermath, but the silence of Andy Gowers, Hawthorn president, has been deafening.

Ultimately, he doesn’t run the game; Andrew Dillon and the commission do, and their inaction to date has also been jarring. It’s not too late.