involving Geelong forward Ollie Henry on Friday night<\/a> \u2014 which you can watch in our video player above \u2014 that moved me to write this blunt column. Who didn\u2019t gasp when they saw this unfold?<\/p>\nHenry, who was on a roll at the time against Fremantle, leapt a metre or more in the air. His opponent, Fremantle\u2019s Heath Chapman, pushed him forward in the lower back, tunnelling Henry. It\u2019s simply a reflex pushing action now from players, who\u2019ve been conditioned to do it with impunity, due to poor umpiring for a decade.<\/p>\n
This incident could well have paralysed Henry – or worse – had he rotated in the air slightly more and landed on his neck, fracturing his cervical vertebrae, compromising the spinal cord.<\/p>\n
Enough is enough. It will end in tragedy.<\/p>\n
That incident was the most dangerous thing I\u2019ve seen on a footy field this year. It should\u2019ve been a four-week ban.<\/p>\n
Instead, Chapman was cited by the MRO and fined just $2500 for \u2018rough conduct\u2019 against Henry. <\/p>\n
And in the main, silence has followed. <\/p>\n
Ultimately, a suspension would be unfair due to the AFL\u2019s inaction on so many other basic and dangerous incidents.<\/p>\n
The push in the back has Gerard Healy fired up.Source: FOX SPORTS<\/p>\n
The push is now so endemic it\u2019s long been at a dangerous level.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time for Swann to act over summer. He\u2019s only got two choices, because someone is going to get badly injured. Or worse.<\/p>\n
Either he replaces the umpires\u2019 coach, who clearly can\u2019t get it right, or preferably gets rid of the ridiculous hands in the back rule, full stop, which no one at present seems capable of coaching or adjudicating properly, much to the game\u2019s demise. Watch old replays from the \u201870s, \u201880s and \u201890s and no one pushed habitually.<\/p>\n
But the professional era has seen it coached into the playing cohort and allowed to evolve by poor umpiring into the mess it has become.<\/p>\n
It was rampant again across the four qualifying\/elimination finals.<\/p>\n
If a forward plays against Hawthorn captain James Sicily from the front, you need your head read. Sicily, as well as Aliir Aliir, are the masters at exploiting the umpires\u2019 confusion. I\u2019d be very surprised if the Dockers didn\u2019t seek serious clarification.<\/p>\n
James Sicily of the Hawks on Freo’s Patrick Voss.Source: FOX SPORTS<\/p>\n
Then in the two semi-finals, there were again many frees totally ignored, with too often commentators referring to players \u201cnudging\u201d opponents under the ball or saying nothing at all. The conditioning is complete.<\/p>\n
There were a couple of standout ones, though, that need to be addressed.<\/p>\n
If Matt Stevic got the axe for one bad call last week, Brett Rosebury should be nervous ahead of preliminary final selection. How from three metres away he could not assess an illegal push from big Lions ruckman Sam Draper straight into the back of Adelaide\u2019s Riley Thilthorpe on Saturday night is staggering.<\/p>\n
I use it as simply one example of so many others. It\u2019s now so widespread, you can\u2019t play in front of your opponent. You can\u2019t bend over to pick up a ground ball because you just get shoved in the back with no protection from the umpiring department, as the rules and history dictate.<\/p>\n
Sam Draper on Riley Thilthorpe.Source: FOX SPORTS<\/p>\n
Ruckmen don\u2019t want to take the front spot at boundary throw-ins for fear of being pushed – sorry, \u201cnudged\u201d – under the ball as they so often are. The result? They compete for the back spot and begin from 40m away, making throw-ins appear shallow too often.<\/p>\n
Another example was Collingwood star Nick Daicos, who shoved Bulldogs captain Marcus Bontempelli violently in the back in a wildcard contest a few weeks ago. No injury, no free kick, no report. He was lucky but one day the luck will run out.<\/p>\n
Yes, they suspended a couple of players months ago and last year for reckless actions, but nothing has been consistently enforced. But the suspensions always come after an injury, not before with incidents like Chapman\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is the behaviour hasn\u2019t changed. It begins with the basic rule itself \u2014 and that\u2019s where the change must begin.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s over to the Commission, Swann and the umpiring department to act decisively and again ban any hands in the back, for they will be responsible for anyone who is injured.<\/p>\n
Oliver Henry of the Cats is taken out of a marking contest by Heath Chapman of the Dockers. Picture: Paul Kane\/Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Henry is lucky that he\u2019s standing upright today, but it\u2019s only a matter of time before someone becomes a victim.<\/p>\n
The high mark is the most spectacular element of our game and it needs protecting. Player safety, though, is an even higher priority.<\/p>\n
I worked as a student in a spinal ward as a physiotherapist. It\u2019s tragic to see people\u2019s lives destroyed with a high cervical injury, confined to a bed and intubated for the rest of their days.<\/p>\n
Is this what it will take for the game\u2019s leaders to finally take the appropriate action?<\/p>\n
A triple All-Australian, five-time club best and fairest winner and 1988 Brownlow Medallist, Gerard Healy is a member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame. He played 211 games across stints with Melbourne and Sydney. He has been a commentator with Fox Footy for two decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What will it take for the AFL to act? Greg Swann put the heat on the umpires mid-season.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-891453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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