Victory fans derail thread to stop real discussion about protecting players from thugs like theirs. 

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Poor Gruen.

I think he's rocking back and forth in a corner somewhere...

Lol. Kids lost it.

Mid life crisis. 

The topic is a good one and worth discussing. Can this thread be saved?

The tolerance for dangerous tackles in the HAL is far greater than most leagues, and probably around 10 years behind the changes that leagues such as the EPL have gone though.

It's not good for player development or competing in the ACL.

Simple solution: give a directive to the refs to red card dangerous and violent tackles. This seaso it's gone too far. At the moment you'd have to do a huge double studs up to the middle off the leg to get sent. We don't want a league for hacks. We don't want a player like pasquali to get a broken leg.

Lovely day today!

Several years ago they were starting to go in the right direction with carding dangerous tackles even if they missed by a ridiculous distance. I remember McFlynn and I think Muscat being carded for two nasty lunges that missed by a bout half a metre and a lot of people arguing over it. What they did was stupid and dangerous and so deserved a caution. Now we have got back to the commentary saying that clearly dangerous leg breaking tackles shouldn't even be a foul if they miss.  Too often a player committing a dangerous act gets an advantage as the player in the possession baulks at the sight. That just encourages dangerous actions. Worst is when they are accused of diving for getting out of the road.

@Gruen, you need thicker skin than that to survive on here. This thread derailing is nothing.

Very true. 

Fully agree with this.

I would add the Australian football has two cultural traits that allow this:

1) The "get stuck in" / "let him know you're there" physicality coming from the influence of NRL/AFL in Australian sporting culture.

2) A tolerance of dangerous tackles if there is a feeling that the intention was the ball. One of my most hated sayings in football (apart from "we were better / deserved to win", which is a rant for another day) is people excusing poor challenges by saying "the ball was there to be won / he is entitled to go for that". Just because you are entitled to go for the ball and you only have eyes for it, it doesn't mean your are allowed to clean up your opponent and not have to face the consequences. I fully understand that there are situations in a game where you might need to make a desperate lunging challenge to prevent a dangerous situation from developing or to score a goal, but if you miss, you've got to go.

I was thinking the exact same thing... A rougher game more closely emulates AFL.... which then leads to more MRP... which too, more closely emulates AFL. Last couple of seasons we were getting so many incidents going to MRP, that i couldve sworn the midweek MRP hearings becoming bigger news than the gameplay itself, closely emulated AFL.

This too could be said for all the ref incompetancies...and why there hasnt been a serious overhaul of the officiating from hq.... disallowed goals, amateur off side errors, magical pens ie finkler/ryall... all becomes bigger news than the gameplay itself in the midweek.

what im saying is, it hasnt been bad for business....for the short term, more clicks, bored afl fans might take more notice.....but as others have alluded, not a particularly good enviroment for our young ball players to be nurtured in and thrive.

Shoudlnt be all that suprising really, our administrative model completely mimics AFL after all.