Judd vs Wellingham suspensions

[rayven]

It's hard to believe that Tex has missed a third of the season without actually hurting anyone. The MRP has a discount for nice guys and a loading for mullets. Ivan beware!!

Taylor got 58 SC points that day walker got 2 for his tackle on him, he got his average (80's) the next week and about 85% of his average the week after.

We lost to the pies in a close game while walker sat out.

 

[SydCrow]

Reassess even?

Edit - Sorry, mean, smart phone post?

I want to know what a pinnicale is. Sounds like an Italian festival

we should have a "smart" phone spell checker error thread

 

[Elder van Berlo]

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that fundamentally, the system is pretty good. You get charged with a particular offence and told the categorisation, so that you are in no doubt about the penalty you will get and what you can accept with a guilty plea. I think it's appropriate that there is a further loading if you are a repeat offender and that you should also get credit for having a good record. I think it's a good thing that there are carryover points so if you were close to the borderline of getting another game, it's easier to get suspended next time because of it.

Having said that, imo it is obviously not working. Not because Wellingham got 3 and Judd/Ziebell got 4 - there are good reasons for that which are well justified. The issue for me is really the inconsistency of classification of offences. The MRP Handbook sets out what is meant by "intentional", "reckless", "negligent" but then doesn't really seem to follow its own definitions. Even in the tribunal hearing last night, the AFL's counsel seemed to adopt the very definition of "reckless" in describing Judd's conduct as "intentional".

Sometimes the potential for injury seems to be taken into account when determining impact, sometimes it doesn't. Compare and contrast Buddy's tackle to Tex's. Both dangerous but ultimately harmless tackles, one is insufficient force, the other medium impact.

These inconsistencies lead to bizarre results, without the safeguard of being able to use precedent at the tribunal. I've said in another thread that the lack of a presumption of innocence is also baffling - it seems to be up to the player to prove their innocence, which in any quasi-criminal tribunal is just unheard of.

So I think the system is ok. Perhaps it could do with some tweaking of points, percentages for loadings and discounts, but at its core I think it is sound. The problem is that the MRP are woefully inconsistent and unaccountable when deciding whether offences are committed and then in categorising those offences. Someone else has posted somewhere that there appears to be an element of reverse engineering in order to get the results that they want, which is both plausible and concerning.

One thing I do find funny is that people are bleating about the Judd decision as evidence of a broken system, when actually he was tried pretty much under the old tribunal system where there was no transparency about what was going on, you just got told a number of games at the end of it.

As for Wellingham/Ziebell - Wellingham got 5 1/2 games, but has an impeccable record at VFL and AFL level and admitted his wrongdoing, so it came down to 3 and change.

Ziebell got 3 1/4 games but was facing his third offence in less than a year, has been suspended for 3 games already in that time and had 1/2 game worth of carryover points. He did not plead guilty, so was not entitled to any discount for that. Now I'm not going to argue about whether or not he should have got 3 1/4 games in the first place as 1) I haven't even seen the incident and 2) That part of the process is the one that I have identified as the key weakness - the initial grading of the incident (if any), but given that he got that - I think it's entirely appropriate that he ended up getting 4 in light of his priors.

 

[jenny61_99]

maybe Judd is sick of being tagged and so when he sees someone defenceless he can't help himself

or maybe he is just revealing his inner Voldemort

Gawd they are spookily similar!

 

[King Elvis]

Judd lucky not to get more.

Wellingham, 4 weeks is about right.

Ziebull shouldn't have gotten anything, what an absolute joke!!

Footy is a hard, fast and brutal game - people are going to get hurt; you don't need to suspend somebody everytime there is an injury!

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

The Ziebell decision is the worst of all time.

Completely makes a mockery of the game.

Should Douglas have been pinged for taking the mark and collecting Palmer high? Should Howe have been penalised for taking that hanger against Sydney and kneeing a bloke in the head? Both collected their opponents high in the process of going for the ball.

Ziebell tried to contest the ball and did contest the ball.

 

[FantasticShirt]

There's something weird about Judd.

Eye gouging, trying to debilitate a player via pressure points, and the latest one.

In all 3 cases, they are cowardly vicious attacks meant to hurt a player who is already on the ground and defenceless, as they are being held by someone else.

Agreed. Extremely odd behavior. Judd just continues to do things that make me lose respect for him. He's such an amazingly talented footballer but he continues to do things like these. They're probably in the "brain fade" category of Barry Hall, just fortunate that he hasn't seriously hurt someone.