Is all on the line, over the line?
Peter Hanlon | May 13, 2009
IF THE flapping of a butterfly's wings in the jungle can trigger a typhoon over the ocean, what chaos can spring from the cracking of two skulls on the MCG members' wing?
Alex Rance and Troy Selwood have lived to tell the tale of their human head-on on Saturday; bones heal, plates and screws can be removed, headaches wear off. But does a hangover linger when we're reminded just how brutal football can be?
No matter how many mums and dads nodded in cringing agreement with what Murray Rance called "every parent's worst nightmare", it won't slow down the game, nor stop players going in without a second thought. Selwood is a Selwood; say no more. As for Rance, Scott Cummings has seen cautionary advice fall on deaf ears.
"He rang me when he was driving home after they'd lost to Melbourne and I said, 'You've got to be careful mate, you're going to kill yourself one day'," Cummings says of Rance. "Basically his answer was, 'There's no alternative'."
Cummings has known Rance since he was a boy, having regarded the young Tiger's father as a mentor since he joined Swan Districts when Murray Rance was nearing the end of his career.
The son's courage is innate, but against the Demons it left him with only a headache, while Brad Green came out of their collision with a broken jaw.
On Saturday Selwood was the luckier one, yet while renowned sports medico Peter Brukner acknowledges the potential for damage when two objects as hard as skulls meet, he cautions against an alarmist reaction.
"Fractured skulls, fractured cheekbones are probably the worst case scenarios," Brukner says. "Concussion is a relatively minor scenario not that concussion is minor. The James Hirds of the world, you can make a mess of the facial bones, but the skull itself seems to be pretty resistant to that sort of thing.
"Is there potential for something even more serious? A nasty fractured skull
there's always that potential, but there's been lots of head clashes but never anything life threatening."
Which doesn't make it any easier to watch. Horse racing reeled last week as images of jumpers tumbling to their death and perhaps that of their sport were shown time and again. The scale differs, but constant replays of the Rance-Selwood clash caused discomfort and not just in the living rooms of the country's near-200,000 Auskickers.
"In pure terms, yes, we would like that (vision) to be broadcast less, because I just don't think it's something you need to play ad nauseum," the AFL's chief operations officer, Gillon McLachlan, said yesterday. But he said the league would continue to focus on making the game safer and not tell the broadcasters what to put to air.
Cummings and Brukner share the concerns of many that the crackdown on contact to the head with hip or shoulder has made such head-banging more common. "If Alex turns himself side-on, he takes out Troy Selwood and gets six weeks," Cummings said. "As much as they've been trying to protect the head, they've probably created a bigger monster."
Wayne Campbell concurs, drawing the logical conclusion if Rance keeps going in head down and backside up, he'll keep cracking his head. "We'd much prefer him to have a big bruise on his bum or his shoulder than his head," the Richmond assistant said yesterday.
At Monday's game review the Tigers' staff lauded their young player's courage, but resolved to hit the tackling bag and work on his technique. As for finding an approach to satisfy the competing demands of unbending attack on the ball while not illegally contacting an opponent or imperilling your own health Campbell is unsure one exists.
Cummings says players now know that if they put their head down and cop any contact, they will get a free kick. He doesn't like to see them rewarded. "Boys put their heads down and hope for the best that they don't end up like Alex and Troy Selwood."
While McLachlan says the league's rules committee will continue to seek the best outcome, Campbell sees it as yet another reason to be in awe of the modern footballer. "The more you look at the game, the more you stand at ground level, they're just fearless. They hit that hard, there's so much to admire about what they do."
Meltdown-proportion scrutiny has meant players who are perceived not to have put their bodies on the line are highlighted as Josh Fraser discovered after Anzac Day a fact Campbell says mitigates against finding a still courageous yet somehow safer middle ground.
"A happy medium doesn't sell newspapers. I think it was always internally that it was highlighted, but now everyone wants to be the first person to say something. People want to put their name up in lights," Campbell says. "Before, you thought you would be letting your teammate down. Now they think they'll be publicly branded."
Which, says Cummings, is something Rance won't have to worry about. "I don't think anyone will call him soft for the rest of his career."
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