I hope this isnt too long but I've been having an on running series of emails with a hawks fan at work and this pretty much sums up my feelings:
"The Stone knee charge seems to have caught just about everyone by surprise, it appears just about everyone (including Hawthorn officials) had written that one off as a big bloke falling over. Even Lyons and co who (I believe) were out to hatchet Staff were happy to let that one go through to the keeper, suddenly he's up on a charge of "misconduct" (I believe, not striking, which is kind of odd).
So in essence I'm really unsure on the Stone knee. I agree Staff is a bit free with his elbows and such in a contest, I've never denied that, but I've never seen, or heard, of him going on with it on a prone player (but I have seen him fall over all by himself a number of times Justin Madden like) so I tend to take the clumsiness view.
But, here's my problem with the negligence rule and contact and your exact point of consistency. If the AFL goes after Staff for negligence when he hit Spider then he has to go for negligence when he fell on Stone. But if Staff goes for that, then every player who ever trips and lands on someone does, do you see my problem, setting the bar this high basically means every trip, fall or slip is potentially a reportable offence. Now, thats obviously not going to happen, it would be stupid, so why are we doing it now with Stafford? Now as I said I am a tigers fan and this makes me biased to an extent but I believe its because:
1. The media love Spider and want him to do well (hell I like Spider and wish him well) and want to get the guy that took him out of the game. Added to this is enormous sympathy for Schawby. Finally the large number of hawks in the media at the moment. The AFL is obviously struggling under that media pressure.
2. The fact that the hawks were winning with Spider dominating and then lost without Spider has led many to surmise that it must, therefore have been deliberate.
3. Staff has form. Whilst he has, in fact, been reported very rarely he has gathered a rep as a dirty player and so the AFL is seizing a chance to nail him.
4. The AFL realises it owes spider one. It knows it screwed him over the umpire thing and this represents payback.
5. Call me paranoid now but - a lot of people enjoy Richmond getting beaten. Just about every major football writer in this country grew up when the Tigers dominated the comp in a way even todays lions can only dream about. Today they enjoy seeing us fail and dont like it when we win.
So, in summary, (gee I went on a bit more than I intended) on the Ruck thing, I'm convinced it was an unfortunate result of circumstances that are part and parcel of ruckplay. On the Stone knee, I'm unsure, I thought it looked like a simple fall and Staff's actions before and after seem to confirm to to me but that is really a matter of conjecture, I (and I suspect no one else) can prove anything on that one either way. So on the balance of probabilities I really cant see Staff being guilty of anything here on the merits of the case, however, I reakon he'll go for three to four for exactly the reasons I outlined above regardless. "