North Melbourne coach Brad Scott says a jumper punch is a cheap shot, and he's right. He also says that one cheap shot inevitably leads to another, and sometimes to so many of them that a match descends to the level of a street brawl, and he's right about that, too. The North Melbourne/Melbourne game on Sunday was an ugly business.
We pause here to duck a round-arm from those who say that a few smacks to the head never hurt anyone and the crowds love it and anyone who says otherwise is a wuss.
Scott says the umpires could fix the problem by handing out an early free kick or two. Here, we must respectfully disagree. We ask so much of umpires already: to adjudicate correctly several hundred times a game without ever forgiving mistakes as we forgive players' mistakes, to bounce the ball unerringly, to have thick skins, and eyes in the back of their heads, and to run like that.
Why should they also be responsible outright for the good and noble conduct of the game?
True, free-kicking a player for a jumper punch might give the next player pause and so lower the temperature of the game. Might.
But, fundamentally, we're looking at the issue the wrong way round. We're concentrating on "jumper" instead of "punch" as if the jumper somehow mitigates the punch. But one player holds another's jumper to disguise the punch, not lessen its impact. It is still a punch.
And AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan says he does not like punching, the fact or the look, and if the rules don't reinforce this, they need to change.
The rules are not strong enough. They need to change. The match review panel guidelines mandate a minimum level of impact constituting a reportable offence. They also make an arbitrary distinction between "intentional" and "careless" acts. Applied to a punch, they are tantamount to saying that a little punch, hurting only mildly, is OK.
Last week, this spared Richmond captain Trent Cotchin a suspension for a jumper punch to Fremantle's Lachie Neale, incurring instead a $1000 fine. This week, ditto for North's Shaun Higgins for his jumpery jab at Demon Clayton Oliver. The same provisions meant that the punch North's Ben Cunnington threw into the mid-riff of Melbourne's Bernie Vince, not even deadened by a fistful of jumper, and forcing Vince from the ground, retching, was marked down to a $1000 fine.
Under the MRP guidelines, a reportable offence once filtered through the algorithm is as likely as not to result in a fine. That is odd in itself, that an act of physical aggression can be redressed by the withholding of a little pocket money. This year, it has meant that much has been collected, little handed out.
Wait. Here comes another haymaker from those who say a bit of on-field violence gets the juices flowing and shows that the players care and anyone who says otherwise is a wuss.
No-one would have accused Alastair Lynch of being a dilettante and wuss in his playing days, and yet he is one who says otherwise. Commentating on the Cotchin incident, he said he wanted jumper punches out of the game. No-one would have accused Brownlow medallist Jimmy Bartel of apathy or wussiness, and yet he also would like to jumper punches graded as "non-football acts", distinct from "football acts", and punished more gravely. As a member of the match review panel, he feels his hands are tied.
There is impact and there is impact. One is player on player, the other the game's message to the watching world. The sum of Monday's judgements are that all the belligerence and nastiness in Sunday's game, all the sniping and snippiness, all the many cheap shots as described by the winning coach, were set right by a one-match ban for Christian Salem and the confiscation of a bit of loose change from sundry others.
"I don't like punching in our game, and I don't think it's the look we want," said McLachlan on Monday. "To the extent if our rules don't provide for it, we'll look to change them."
Now would be a good time. But watch out for those who think a fist balled up in a jumper is fair game.
