Rival AFL clubs have been left fuming after the league's light sanctions on the Adelaide Crows for breaching social distancing and AFL training laws in the Barossa Valley.
After an AFL investigation found 16 players had been training last week, despite no team being allowed to train in more than groups of two, Crows assistant Ben Hart took the fall, being suspended for six weeks, while the players involved escaped with suspended one-match bans.
Veteran AFL columnist Caroline Wilson slammed the sanctions as "embarrassing", before claiming the ruling had left rival clubs irate after AFL boss Gillon McLachlan's mixed messages regarding the training restrictions.
"The clubs are disgusted. Every AFL club I've spoken to today cannot believe that the AFL wasn't harsher on the Crows," Wilson told Footy Classified.
"I'm not suggesting there was a cover-up by the Crows, but there is absolutely no way that a serious penalty didn't have to be given to the Crows.
"Gillon McLachlan told the CEOs and the coaches last week that the Crows had broken two sets of rules, South Australian quarantine rules and AFL rules.
"The coaches were told the players face serious transgressions if they break COVID-19 social distancing rules, including suspensions of up to a season.
"To not even be suspended for a week or two weeks says to me that the AFL is saying basically footballers are a dumb pack of sheep who who have absolutely no idea of what every citizen in Australia understands."
Wilson also suggested that Hart had been made a scapegoat in the incident in order for the players to get off without major sanctions.
"The coach, who was there or wasn't there, Ben Hart, has been made a scapegoat for the players," she said.
"Of course they're going to throw their arms around him because he's taken one for the team here.
"I just think the players broke the rules and deserved to be suspended. What Ben Hart has done is put his hand up and said, 'Blame me it's my fault'.
"He's still going to get paid when he's back at work at the end of May. There's a suggestion that he was keeping his distance, but when a certain drill started and the players all came together, he should have stopped it and he didn't and he was some distance away.
"What about the High Performance boss who gave the instructions in the first place?
"What about Tom Doedee in the leadership group? Why haven't they been sanctioned? Were all the 16 players even spoken to?"
Wilson's view was echoed by that of Essendon legend Matthew Lloyd, who said he was "surprised" by the league's sanctions handed down to the Crows.
Lloyd argued that some of the more senior players involved in the breach, such as Doedee, Kyle Hartigan and Lachlan Murphy should have taken more of the blame, as opposed to Hart shouldering the entirety.
"(Hartigan) is now 28 years old and has played 100 games. I know kids who are 17 years of age who aren't even in an AFL program who have known the rules over that period," he told Footy Classified.
"Doedee just got voted into the leadership group, he's only played 20-odd games but he's in the leadership group.
"Murphy, Doedee and Hartigan are very fortunate that if they were there and they were kicking a football in a group of eight, I think they should have been suspended for at least a week or two.
"That's what they're there for. You take control the moment you see something (wrong).
"I don't know if they were among those eight players kicking the footy, but if they were, I'm almost as critical of them as I am Ben Hart."
* This article was originally published here
No comments:
Post a Comment