Why the ‘fabric of the game’ will never be destroyed

AFL: Melbourne’s Jacob van Rooyen is free to play Hawthorn on Saturday after his two-game suspension was sensationally overturned by the AFL

By any traditional standard of the game van Royen was compelled to compete. He’s a tall forward. His coach demands that if he can’t mark a ball, he has to compete to bring the ball to ground. It’s a non-negotiable for an AFL footballer. He can’t bring the ball to ground without making contact. He has to collect the body on the way through – crash the pack, so to speak. It’s one reason why basketballers don’t always make the successful transition to football, although there are exceptions: Dean Brogan and Scott Pendlebury spring readily to mind. Van Royen certainly collected the body and the upper part of his arm collected Ballard’s head, but he wasn’t concussed. So why the suspension? The tribunal chairman Jeff Gleeson KC justified the two-game suspension thus: “a reasonable player would have foreseen that in spoiling the way he did, it would have almost inevitably resulted in a forceful blow to Ballard’s head.” He is an eminent man Mr Gleeson, but aside from the contradiction of “almost inevitably” (it’s either inevitable or it’s not), how can a footballer, if he has eyes only for the ball, really predict outcome? When he was the AFL’s chief prosecutor at tribunal hearings, he approached each case with the zeal of crown prosecutor. He seemed then, as he does now, to have little tolerance for football accidents. More seriously though, for a legal man, he ignored football law 18.5.3 which says: “Incidental contact in a marking contest will be permitted if the player’s sole objective is to contest or spoil a mark.” Fortunately, Melbourne, a club of means, appealed the decision, the verdict was overturned and van Royen is free to play. Sanity prevailed, but it was an ordeal that a first-year footballer should not have had to endure.

Port Adelaide, a club without the means of Melbourne, decided not to appeal Junior Rioli’s two-game suspension for what looked like innocuous contact to Essendon defender Jordan Ridley. By any viewing it’s hard to see how contact was made, let alone contact hard enough to render Ridley concussed. His delayed, exaggerated reaction was reminiscent of a soccer player taking a dive yet he was subbed out and will miss this week. Still, Rioli’s intent was not to injure and the action almost benign. Another assault on the “fabric of the game.”

We often hear that the “fabric of the game” is being destroyed by over-officious adjudication and draconian match review penalties. So what is this “fabric of the game” that is so constantly under threat?

The fabric of the game is actually a tapestry woven together by many threads. The most significant of those threads is competitiveness. We play for the thrill of the contest because it’s not football without the buzz – the thrill of the contest. However, it’s the contest that causes tempers to flare. So the vigour of the contest, defined often by tackling and bumping, needs to be balanced by sportsmanship. It’s called the spirit of the game – another thread. Then there’s courage, mateship, humour, irreverence, strength, fitness, sacrifice, the catharsis of the physical clashes, the exhilaration of the high mark, the satisfaction of victory and the devastation of losing. All are threads that bind together the “fabric of the game”.

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The spirit of the game has always been preserved by the tribunal – football’s judicial system which protected those who played within the laws from the thugs who would resort to violence to seek an unfair advantage. However, the role of the tribunal has changed dramatically over the past decade. Increasingly it ignores the fact that accidents happen on a football field and injuries are not always caused by violent unsporting acts. For instance the bump, legal under the laws of the game, is now almost redundant. Additionally, players are being suspended for what five years ago would be regarded as excellent tackles. It’s not unreasonable to predict that within the next decade, both the bump and the tackle could be outlawed. It’s a vastly different game to the one Tom Wills pioneered. However, one could argue the fabric, while stressed at times, has endured.

It’s worth remembering that football was originally a game created for the upper-class gentlemen cricketers to maintain some level of fitness over the winter months. The base working class didn’t have the time to play anyway. However, when the hours of the working class changed and they could indulge in this exciting, vigorous activity, they discovered they could play. Not only could they play, they could play well. But with that working class footballer came the violence. The ethics of the gentleman sportsman were wasted on the inner-city labourers and tradesmen who, through football, found a way to bridge the social gap. Regardless of social status, violence begat violence so the tribunal became a necessary instrument to protect all players. Occasionally it overreacts.

Australian rules football may be the most egalitarian sport in the world. It is played by male or female athletes from every echelon of our remarkably narrow social spectrum. They are united by the “fabric of the game” even though the spirit of the contest can be undermined by undisciplined, even violent acts. And yes, football today is different to football of 10 to 20 years ago because some of the accepted violence has been adjudicated from the game.

The “fabric of the game” – that term so often used to justify violence – will be tested, stretched, strained and maybe even torn. Over generations it may look different, but it will never be destroyed. It will survive.

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