Mr Ant, to clarify, I find it somewhat ridiculous to push back against the complaints about the treatment of Pickett. If you take the incident with Cameron in isolation then sure he gets the same fine as Cameron. But we can still whinge about it since it was Cameron who tried to rip Shai's head off and we didn't even get a 50m penalty let alone Cameron getting fined (how many Richmond players have heads which are not sacrosanct now, at least 3 by my count). The trouble is that you cannot see the incident with Cameron, and the fine to Pickett, in isolation. Pickett gets fined every second week for things other players do and no-one blinks an eye. He is treated more harshly and I reckon there is at least an element of racism in the way Pickett is treated.
DS
What Cameron did to Shai has nothing to do with the fine that he got for wrestling with Marlion, and the fine that Marlion got for wrestling with him. When you have two dudes going at it for minutes they'll both get fined, and there is nothing in slightest way racist about that.
The lack of a 50 metre penalty beforehand has nothing to do with the fines.
I'm still hearing from people here that Cameron eye-gouged Marlion, although when challenged it they say things like his fingers were "close" to his eyes and he "nearly" eye gouged him or he "thought about" doing it. The MRP doesn't fine/suspend for people nearly/thinking about or being "close" to doing things. Cameron is huge *smile* IMO, and maybe he was "thinking" about it, but see above.
I know I expect too much since this is a forum of Richmond nuff-nuffs, myself included, so people float huge anti-Richmond conspiracies and I can see why that's fun to do, but the conflation of separate incidents, and the passage of myth into received fact always bothers me. You say you can't look at incidents in isolation - that's exactly what the MRP does. Exactly. I can imagine our rep taking that case up - "m'lud, Mr Pickett should be excused his fine for wrestling with Mr Cameron because Mr Bolton didn't receive 50 metres for the free kick just previoius". Absurd.
I've got some time for the argument that Pickett gets looked at more stringently than others, but none of that applies to his wrestling fine. Two men wrestling got fined for wrestling. That's it, case closed, bon voyage, goodbye.
Personally I love what Pickett does - he's on the edge, he's tough, he makes people hear footsteps. He competes like a mofo and runs all day. He's a proud warrior Noongar man from the West. Sometimes he steps over the line, but that adds a lot to our team and our play, the coaches understand this and would be more than happy with it.
