Carlton Supporters Club

Grundy gone for 12 weeks....knee on knee too......do we end up with ruckman wearing knee guards...
Darcy lined up Pittonet IMHO, he had eyes only for the player and was intent on meeting him physically rather than the ball.

Everyone attacks but the good teams have a couple of players who rotate over to backup their mate who has gone on the attacking run like I was saying...Saad turned to look who had rotated over to Schultz but saw only fresh air...
Petty does a lot of that for Melbourne when May and Lever go off intercepting, been made worse by losing Jones for us, as much as he was a mad hatter with ball in hand at times he had the speed to get over and spoil for teammates.

Grundy gone for 12 weeks....knee on knee too......do we end up with ruckman wearing knee guards...
Darcy lined up Pittonet IMHO, he had eyes only for the player and was intent on meeting him physically rather than the ball.

The AFL must act on this asap. Two big blokes running and jumping at each other (180 degrees apart) with raised knees is a recipe for disaster. When did these knee on knee things start?

We have a few that do/did that.
Weiters, Gov, Marchbank, Doch....

Obviously, Jones was the best at it.

Probably when the quality of the grounds got better.
Previously you were playing in a mud pit and could barely get up off the ground.

Used to be that the rucks came more at each other on a 45 degree angle than opposite. Nevertheless, change needs to happen.

I suspect allowing opposition sides to get 'runs of goals' is more between the lug holes than anything. Establishing a system (and trust in that system) that becomes 'habitual' in countering this will take time, and we need the personnel to carry it out.

Yeah, 2-3 months for Pitto.

Knee guards? Maybe.

Probably just easier they either do a jump ball (Bball style) or run in from the same direction (ala boundary throwins).

Firstly, fans often get the PCL confused with the Patella, thinking the damage is in the front of the knee but it isn't. It connects from the middle of the upper to the rear of the lower. The cross section on the right below shows the knee facing left.


Knee guards are not the solution, the problem might even be worse because of them, they can be used like the NFL body armour as a battering ram to increase the impact forces. Knee / shin guards mostly protect the patella tendon in the front and prevent skin damage and calcification which is a common problem.

I'd ban raising the knees altogether, it's just not required, it's a tactic that was introduced by smaller ruckmen like Newman in the 60s and 70s to compete with the giants.

I would also penalise the rucks for watching their opponent and not watching the footy like Darcy did to Pitto.

Allow the rucks to wrestle a bit more with the fend offs, give them the choice of jumping or not jumping, it's a skill. I'm not talking about guys who step through past the fall of the ball and prevent a fair contest, that can still be penalised as a block. But they should be able to meet body to body without jumping, as long as it is under the fall of the ball. Pitto and some other rucks have been wrongly penalised for this in recent times, and that is actually contributing to the PCL problem.

The AFL might be even better off to just ban raising the knee, ban shin/knee guards and also make the circle a little bigger to allow the jumping type rucks a fair run at it against a wrestling type ruck. Almost a bit of going backwards to go forwards. The rule on raising the knee could be as simple as the upper leg has to be below horizontal at the time of impact, PCLs occur when the upper leg is at or above horizontal at the time of impact and the lower leg gets push back stretching the PCL. In the image below Darcy is using his kneecap / patella to drive into Pitto's shin, if Pitto's jump had been a touch lower so that he made contact below Darcy's knee, they both could have sustained PCL injuries in the one contest.