Club discipline needs to be a balancing act
By Matthew Richardson
The Age
July 10, 2005
When Luke Hodge was suspended for missing training after spending his 21st birthday, as most young men do, by having a few drinks, I certainly felt for him.
The reason being the only time I have ever missed training in my 13 years at Richmond was for exactly the same reason.
I'd had a big night for my birthday and was required to attend a Richmond family day and training run at 10am on the Sunday morning before the first game in 1996.
Unfortunately I woke up, rolled over and the clock read 9.50am. Any other time, I would have panicked and gone straight to the club. I probably would have got there in time because I lived close by in Carlton. But my aching head didn't allow me to, and I had a couple of extra hours sleep - I physically couldn't get out of bed to train.
If this had happened in 2005, it might have been all over the papers, as Luke's scenario was. The reality in 1996 was that Robert Walls pulled me aside on the Monday night after training and told me I'd done the wrong thing and hit me with a small fine. The whole episode was over.
Looking back, I think the whole episode was handled quite well. I've never missed a training session again and I certainly didn't have any sort of public humiliation to deal with, as Luke had last week.
That was how Richmond did it then. Obviously, the Hawks have got a whole different set of rules when it comes to handling these situations. All clubs would have a policy on this matter and more than likely the player group would have had a say in signing off on it. I can certainly draw on some experiences Richmond have had with the same policy back in 2000.
That year, we had two separate incidents. In the first one, Nick Daffy was involved in a late night incident in Bendigo and was subsequently suspended for the round-four match against Fremantle. We lost the match by one point, and the obvious question was asked at the time - would we have won if Nick had played? That we will never know, but he was an influential player and would have had some impact on the match.
The second one involved another key player in Brad Ottens. This time, he missed the round-11 match against Hawthorn and we fell across the line by three points. The system was introduced in Danny Frawley's first year at the club - he, no doubt, wanted us to know that he wouldn't be putting up with anything and we certainly knew the consequences if we did muck up.
In the case of Nick, I know he certainly felt a little bit alienated from the coaching staff after the incident. It certainly had an effect on him.
Having experienced both ways of doing things, there's no doubt I believe, and this is just my opinion, that suspending players only really penalises the rest of the playing group. Each week, you need to have your best possible team on the park, so when you have a fit player sitting in the grandstands watching, it can be very hard to take, especially after a close loss. In that year, we missed the finals by one game and 4 per cent. Who's to say had these guys played whether we might have scraped in?
I definitely believe a club needs a strong set of standards that all players need to abide by. Who's to really say what works best, but I think certainly a system of fines should be in place and players need to be punished, whether by a fine or by extra training, in a way that hits them and not the rest of the group.
When a player mucks up, it normally is late at night and it normally involves a nightclub and alcohol. Other things that have been tried include having a curfew. What tends to happen then is that players sneak out anyway and hang out in small groups rather than sticking together. I don't think that works either.
It might sound like I think players should be able to do whatever they want. I'm certainly not suggesting that, but I do think that you still need to be able to have some sort of life outside football. Sometimes the only time you do not feel stressed about football is the few hours after the game before you get into it for another week with recovery the next day.
It seems to be getting a lot harder to do, with allegations even stemming from players being in the same building as an alleged incident. This has happened already this year at Richmond and is very frustrating when you know no player was guilty of anything, but questions still have to be answered the next day.
Gone are the days when incidents could be swept under the carpet and never be heard of again.
There's a lot of pressure on young AFL footballers, not only on their on-field performance but even when they're trying to relax at night, that certainly wasn't around 10 years ago. The media seems to hunt for stories of footballers mucking up at night.
I'm not suggesting that all players are angels, but the large majority do the right thing most of the time. I guess what you'd like to see happen is you give the players their own heads and trust that they will do the right thing most of the time. Of course, they're only human and mistakes will be made - and if the same person continually makes the same mistake, that's a different story. But, surely, one mistake can be made without having to worry about being crucified for it.
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