Rodney Eade launches king-hit on football thuggery

Rodney Eade launches king-hit on football thuggery

Stephen Rielly | July 17, 2008



ON Tuesday, Geelong coach Mark Thompson foreshadowed a "pure" game against the Western Bulldogs this Saturday, by which he meant a skilful and legitimate physical contest between the top two teams in the competition to date.

It was Thompson's diplomatic way of slating the sort off-the-ball violence that saw Dean Solomon suspended for eight matches later in the day and has his best tagger, Cameron Ling, nursing four fractures to his right cheek and the reality of a month or more on the sidelines.

Yesterday, his counterpart this weekend, Rodney Eade, made a statement of his own on the subject when he said he would be disappointed if the result of Saturday's game was in any way shaped by illegal force and doubly disappointed if one of his own players was responsible for it.

"There is a right and wrong way to play the game," Eade said. "That doesn't mean you shirk it, but it does mean that you don't go breaking a bloke's jaw off the ball.

"You've got to play hard, aggressive footy. People want to see a contest, a physical contest, as much as they want to see goals and marks and great kicking, but one is sport and the other isn't."

Eade attributes in part the unprecedented skills of the modern footballer to the near-eradication of on-field violence brought about by rule changes and society's less tolerant attitude to violence in sport.

The game has been allowed to blossom tactically and athletically with some of the concerns about thuggery removed from the field, he said.

"If we want our players to put their head over the ball, they have to have confidence that they are protected by the rules from serious harm. Does anyone seriously question that these days?" Eade said.

Eade, like AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou, who said yesterday that the strong reaction to Solomon's hit on Ling told of how the world, and football with it, had moved on from its Neanderthal past, was mistaken to get nostalgic about so-called yesteryear toughness.

Not even the idea that the game is somehow less of a physical challenge for today's players was correct, he said.

"The game has never been any tougher than what it is at the moment, in a genuine, pure sense. The old-timers might disagree but too often in their time toughness was thuggery," Eade continued.

"A hit behind play, dropping a bloke when he wasn't looking. That's not tough.

"Geelong, apart from being skilful, are a genuinely tough side. They win contested ball and as a rule they don't take their eye off the footy. That's tough. It's not letting a bloke beat you to the ball so that you can whack him in the head. As a game we've lauded a lot of players for being tough when, really, what they did didn't require a lot of courage."

Eade will welcome back mid-fielder Ryan Griffen for the match and forward Scott Welsh, but will have to do without defender Tom Williams for at least another week.

Geelong is expected to have James Kelly make an immediate return after missing with a calf problem, but will be without Ling and Brownlow Medal fancy Gary Ablett.

Well if it needs to be said, us and the cats are the most fairest sides in the competition and if the weather doesnt spoil it i have no doubt we will have 2 sides out there playing football!
As was said many years ago in cricket parlance,"there are 2 teams out there, 1 is playing cricket the other is not" will not be the case here.

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Originally Posted by ledge

Well if it needs to be said, us and the cats are the most fairest sides in the competition and if the weather doesnt spoil it i have no doubt we will have 2 sides out there playing football!
As was said many years ago in cricket parlance,"there are 2 teams out there, 1 is playing cricket the other is not" will not be the case here.

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Well said ledge.

It really makes me chuckle when images of pure thuggery from yesteryear are shown, and are lauded by a few of examples of how football was played in the 'glory days', where it seems the most important attribute required of a footballer in the eyes of some was the willingness to knock the other bloke out by fair means or otherwise.

The game has changed for the better, and people bemoan the fact that some players of yesteryear would have been hounded out of the game by the tribunal. Maybe they should have been.

Spot on with his article. A few coaches like Choco might like to take a thing or two from this.

Let's not get too holyier-than-thou (HTF do you spell holy-ier?).

It's one thing to take out thuggery, it's another thing rubbing a bloke like Murphy out for a bump that was marginally high on a bloke who did not have his head over the ball.

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Originally Posted by Sockeye Salmon

Let's not get too holyier-than-thou (HTF do you spell holy-ier?).

It's one thing to take out thuggery, it's another thing rubbing a bloke like Murphy out for a bump that was marginally high on a bloke who did not have his head over the ball.

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Who rubbished Murphy?

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Originally Posted by Sockeye Salmon

Let's not get too holyier-than-thou (HTF do you spell holy-ier?).

It's one thing to take out thuggery, it's another thing rubbing a bloke like Murphy out for a bump that was marginally high on a bloke who did not have his head over the ball.

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The way I see it, Murphy's hit was fine in yesteryear and should have been fine today.

What I can't stand is labelling a bloke tough because he, with no interest whatsoever in the ball, charged headlong into a bloke going for a mark who only had eyes for the ball. It happened all the time in years gone by and I think it was downright cowardly.

EDIT: H-O-L-I-E-R Sockeye.

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Originally Posted by Griffen#16

Who rubbished Murphy?

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Umm???

I am with SS. Let's not be too precious about the style of footy being played. The biggest problem I had with Freo last week - and for those who watched the game apart from Solomon's hit on Ling (which was terrible) and Josh Carr being his usual peanut self, was nowhere near bad enough for the hysteria it has generated - was that they got smashed by 13 goals. Sure, Crowley gave it to Ablett - good luck to him - it was not as bad as what some favorite sons at our club have done in the past 10 years, and no worse than what guys like Baker have been getting away with in recent times. A player willing to sacrifice his game and lay it on the line for the team? Yes please.

All I really care about this week is that we win - 'pure football' and all the media crap that is carrying on about skill and talent and run can get stuffed as far as I am concerned. And if we win after having kicked and physically abused Geelong from end to end at Kardinia Park such that they have doubts in their mind every time they play us again this year, so much the better.

Beat them with skill, beat them with aggression...I dont really care. Just beat them.

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Originally Posted by westdog54

The way I see it, Murphy's hit was fine in yesteryear and should have been fine today.

EDIT: H-O-L-I-E-R Sockeye.

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Murph's hit was worthy of a free kick and that's it.

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Originally Posted by Sockeye Salmon

Let's not get too holyier-than-thou (HTF do you spell holy-ier?).

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Agreed. And have we forgotten some of our recent history? One of the reasons I decided to go for the Dogs was our biff.

Wish I'd seen Danny Southern deal with that WCE player (Sumich?)

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Originally Posted by Dry Rot

Agreed. And have we forgotten some of our recent history? One of the reasons I decided to go for the Dogs was our biff.

Wish I'd seen Danny Southern deal with that WCE player (Sumich?)

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Southern is one of my favourite Bulldogs players of all time. But strangling someone in a melee isn't exactly a reason to start following a team. (I think universally agreed that Sumich was a bit soft though in that incident)

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Originally Posted by Beuts2Blame

But strangling someone in a melee isn't exactly a reason to start following a team.

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I found out about that a few years after following the Dogs.

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Originally Posted by Sockeye Salmon

Umm???

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Sorry completely mis-read your post.