I'm not in the least bit emotional about this. I've presented a series of facts as best I can. My outlook has nothing on the hand-wringing of some in the AFL community who had decided the very fabric of the game was under threat if Mackay was suspended.
I think the problem here is that those of us who want to see the duty of care concept better understood and more rigorously applied on the footy field are thought of as being hysterical. The issue of concussion and CTE is too important for hyperbole and emotional thinking. I think history will show this to be a worthy fight.
In my post, I said when the ball first hits the ground, Mackay is easily 20m away from Clark. Taking another look now, I reckon it's closer to 25m. The AFL's counsel, Jeff Gleeson, said in his submission it was '20-plus metres'. That was not disputed.
The fact is, he was far enough away to generate significant speed and to decide how he'd impact the contest. That is all that matters.
This goes to the core of the matter and is where Mackay's duty of care kicks in.
Bizarrely, it was Adelaide's counsel at the tribunal, Andrew Culshaw, who saw fit to spell out Mackay's options:
“Could he have stopped, waited, tackled? Absolutely. But the fact there was another action doesn’t make it unreasonable for him to go for the ball. There are always multiple options - marking or spoiling, tackling or corralling.” Of course, when he says it wasn't "unreasonable" for Mackay to "go for the ball", he conveniently leaves out the speed of the impact and the fact Clark was unaware of the impending contact. But, look at all the options his very own counsel said were open to Mackay. His choice to ignore them all means the consequences of his actions are largely on him.
This was not a one-off incident of its type. Look at two other collisions this season: the Harbrow hit on Gibbons and the O'Meara hit on Hayward. All three players who've been felled—Clark, Gibbons and Hayward—are chasing a loose ball with eyes only for it, and are hit in the head in exactly the same way ... by an opponent who makes contact with their shoulder.
The pattern is clear. When a player is hunting a loose ground ball, their attention is purely focused on the ball and not the oncoming player. It happens time and again. Given it is consistently putting players out of the game, whether that be through concussion or an awful facial injury, isn't it time to put the duty of care onto the opponent? We can't allow this to continue.
Peter Jess doesn't. That was his description of the outcome. If the AFL community is yet to come to terms with the nature of 'duty of care', then the court action he's working towards with Greg Griffin on behalf of past players will likely bring everyone up to speed. By the way, it is expected Clark will miss the remainder of the season due to the severity of his injuries. How is that not a catastrophic outcome?
No, I was speculating his injury was so severe that (a) a test may not have possible under the circumstances, (b) it was likely assessed there was a greater priority getting Clark to hospital to have his jaw stabilised and (c) there was no likelihood Clark would return to the ground so it was possibly rendered unnecessary.
Given how easily a player can be concussed—think Dusty and Marshall in recent weeks—I'd be amazed if Clark would have passed a concussion test on that hit.
You hear this one rolled out a lot. It's a lazy statement and, in this case, irrelevant. For example, if Mackay had bumped Clark in the side rather than the face, there would have been no tribunal hearing. Physical contact occurred, per the rules and expectations of all players on the arena, just not the forceful, front-on, head-high, avoidable contact of this instance.
You make the assumption that those lobbying for actions like Mackay's to be sanctioned actually think concussions can be removed from the game. They can't and it's not the point. Accidents happen. What we want to see is a greater duty of care to minimise the foreseeable head knocks, so that fewer and fewer past players lead awful lives in retirement.
