- Apr 23, 2016
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- AFL Club
- Essendon
Personally, I'm glad we have evolved and realise that protecting players from more high contact is the right thing to do and worth some neanderthals whinging about how the game has gone SAWFT.
The amusing thing is; so many of these guys talking about how soft players are today, would last about 2 minutes in the modern game.
There's far more physical contact these days than ever before, at higher speeds. There's just less thuggery and 'illegal' contact now.
Running around punching other blokes in the head, leading with elbows, or knocking blokes flat because they "left themselves exposed" doesn't make you tough, and it doesn't belong in professional sport.
Debate the merits of whether May was a. late, b. made high contact, and/or c. was a low or medium impact. Don't try to argue that because some thug in country football would have knocked Berry out, that it somehow justifies anything.
FWIW: I think May looked more like he made contact to the sternum than the head, which is ****ing painful, but Berry never appeared to lose consciousness to me, it looked more like he had the wind knocked out of him and they didn't bother bringing him back on. Maybe the top of the shoulder made some incidental contact to the chin, maybe not. I can see Melbourne arguing low impact to get it downgraded, or not high contact pending Brisbane's medical report.