Zantuck disciplined
By Peter Ker, Mark Fuller
realfooty.theage.com.au
May 12, 2004
Richmond will not consider Ty Zantuck for senior selection this week after he was involved in a late-night incident outside a Prahran nightclub on Saturday, then missed a junior football clinic he had been expected to attend on Saturday morning.
But reigning club champion Mark Coughlan is yet to be penalised by the club, despite being with Zantuck outside the Boutique nightclub after 3am, and being caught up in the incident that resulted in police being called.
The club has not fined any of the players over the incident, revealed yesterday in The Age, but may consider further punishments when the match committee next meets.
The Tigers, however, are unlikely to follow the Western Bulldogs' player-curfew model despite being "frustrated" by the actions of Zantuck, Coughlan and a third player - believed to be Kayne Pettifer - who left the nightclub earlier in the evening.
As punishment, Zantuck this week will train and play with Coburg Tigers. "That's disappointing from his point of view," said Richmond football manager Greg Hutchison. "He is going to be eliminated from senior selection this week. We need all our players available for selection, particularly a quality player like Ty."
... Hutchison said the club would continue to trust its players rather than impose curfews. "We haven't discussed a curfew; we expect our players to behave accordingly," he said.
"The problem is if you start putting curfews on people and they break the curfews, then you've still got the same result as if they are out late at night anyway.
"We trust our players to do the right thing and on this occasion we got a couple of blokes who did the wrong thing."
Hutchison said Richmond would not punish Coughlan in the same way as Zantuck because he was sidelined indefinitely with injury.
"Mark Coughlan will be treated a little bit differently . . . he is in a situation where he is returning from injury so it doesn't impact upon him in terms of selection," he said.
Hutchison did not name Pettifer, but confirmed that a third player had been spoken to. "There was another player there and he left a fair bit earlier. He understands he shouldn't have been out that late at night; even though it was a weekend off he still had a training session the next morning," he said.
Hutchison emphasised that unlike the Hawthorn players sanctioned for being out late at the same venue last week, Zantuck and Coughlan were neither drunk, nor involved in any illegal activity.
"They've done nothing wrong other than just being out late at night," he said.
http://realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2004/05/11/1084041405642.html
