Re: Terrible News RE Alex McKinnon
Reply #5 –
This is a tragedy.
There was no real blame for this, the tackle, the impact with the ground happens a million times over each season at professional and amateur grounds everywhere.
However, it should be a lesson to all sports people about the dangers of tucking your chin into your chest when you see an impact coming. I know it is a reaction that happens naturally, protecting eyes, face, etc., etc.. when you see a collision coming you often cannot help it. The type of impact McKinnon suffered as he hit the ground is very similar to the impact White suffered when ducking his head into the on coming tackler last year.
To me this highlights two things in our sport, not related to the McKinnon incident.
Until the AFL gets serious about blokes diving in head first, like the weekend Simpson incident and Jack Ziebell's wrecking ball approach, players are at risk. Sure penalize the players for making head high contact, but penalise the others for ducking into a collision as well. Paying a free kick is not enough, the video refs should be handing out penalties.
The second thing is blokes jumping off the ground to take hold of a disputed ball or jumping into the tackler, I am not talking about marking here just a ball in dispute. It is a growing trend and in the past it just never happened. Watch, you see guys leave the ground to grab a ball that is bouncing only waist height because they have an approaching opponent. This is because AFL coaches, the megalomaniac types, coach athletes to become footballers, but many of those super athletes fear the very collisions that are a natural part of football. In the old days if your feet left the ground you were fodder for bigger guys to plant their legs and just brush you aside using a hip or a shoulder. Once your feet are off the ground you are out of control and free falling, you cannot push back. But in recent times AFL umpiring has deemed keeping your feet on the ground and disposing of an opponent is blocking their run and often award a free kick against the player doing the blocking. IMHO, this is exactly the wrong way to judge this scenario, the guy jumping is the one who should be penalised. Worse still sometimes the bloke who stays on the ground in the contest gets pinged for tunneling, again this just encourages players to jump.