Carlton Supporters Club

I think it was a rhetorical question Paul.

Gibbs just given two weeks.

Anyone gunna lose sleep over that

Finally got to watch the whole game.

Great improved effort from the team, with the tackling in particular quite fierce. Tended to get their bodies engaged more in tackles rather than just grasping with their arms.

Best players for me were Murphy, Cripps, Bell and Rowe. Other good contributions from Gibbs, Docherty, Buckley, Henderson, Casboult, Everitt, Graham and Yarren.  Quite a few players drifted in and oht of the games, but the best players stuck at it the whole game.

We still had 100+ points kicked against us, when Schultz and westhoff had poor games, suggesting our defence still needs alot of work. But good run and carry out of half back and a preference for finding targets in the middle rather than thumping it along the lines.

In two minds about the Gibbs tackle, but the means of determining such incidents is a mess by the AFL. No proper tribunal would use the effect on the player as a primary determinant of a penalty. Did he break the rules? If the answer is no then he has no case to answer. 3 weeks is excessive for an act that was within the rules, and was without intent. Appropriate would be a few points to carry over as a warning to take a little more care. Club should appeal immediately.

The official line from the MRP is that the tackle involved careless conduct and high impact to the head, both of which in my view are correct.

@Viv, I believe that if there are 2 actions to the tackle then it is considered reckless.

So players have to be careful when they are tackling now? Tackle with intent by all means but do it with care? This is absolutely ridiculous. The bloke wasn't even concussed FFS. If we don't challenge this we are still a very weak football club.

The players are bound by contracts, rules, codes of conduct etc. Implicit in all of these would be an element of care. Tackling within the rules would hopefully involve an element of care. It's an area that the AFL seems very tardy in addressing.

As an example - If you have players lying on the ground, you will see other players walk around them, leap over them etc. Of course some players might give them a bit of a nudge. The players on the ground are not treated as part of the turf, with an army of other players stomping on them left right and center. Then people  will say, "so players have to be careful where they walk now ?"

It's a ridiculous example, but hopefully it gets my point across.

But I really don't see how players are expected to tackle hard but carefully. First the bump and now the tackle. The AFL have to draw a line here. They are far too reactive. This is a physical game there will always be incidental contact and injury. As it was this bloke wasn't even injured.

I agree with this argument, and the tackling one has been awfully difficult to deal with. The difficulty with rough conduct as a rule is that it requires more in terms of judgement to determine a penalty, than that afforded by the current MRP arrangements. Much of what has been formulated by the MRP has worked, in that it has put in place a prescribed matrix of criteria to determine sanctions. This works well in clearly identifiable instances where a reportable offence has occured, and has been a good result for the game.

But 'rough conduct' requires a greater level of judgement and discretion than what can be provided by the MRP guidelines. It might be better to get such cases to the tribunal itself and have it determined there. This of course creates more problems, and requires the use of precedent, which is not the case now.

Or as you suggest, gibbs will cop it and we will all move on pretty quickly.

It's possibly a multi step process, but the first step would be to ban sling tackles. If you've got the guy completely wrapped up like Gibbs did, there's no need to sling him down. I think this game has numerous examples of tackles that were hard, but fair. Now, you can get semantic and substitute the word "far" for "careful". I think the inconsistency from one MRP ruling to the next is causing a lot of issues.