Premiership Chances
The Swans had their chance to take their first premiership since moving to Sydney improve dramatically last night, when mainstay Barry Hall’s suspension was lifted, letting him play on Saturday in the Grand Final. Perhaps I’m too accustomed to a different standard of athletic violence. Watching the various football codes here has been a bit of an eye-opener. In both rugby and Aussie Rules, there’s no padding, no helmet more elaborate than’s needed to keep your ears attached, and a penchant for tripping and shoving just short of clotheslining your opponent that’s only just shy of pure mayhem. For all the talk of “king hits” and so forth, it’s a wonder there aren’t more paralyzing incidents, let alone career-ending injuries. So when Hall rabbit-punched St. Kilda’s Matt Maguire in the opening quarter of last week’s semi, it was an obvious tactical move. No official saw it happen at the time, and videotape review is rarely clear enough to make a substantive finding, as in this case. While I thought at the time that Maguire was bunging it on a bit, Hall’s punch was swift and deliberate and straight into the diaphragm. While it’s useful to have a policy of reducing the penalty for an early admission of guilt, and the offense occurred early enough in the match that you could say it made little difference to the outcome of the game, Hall’s excuse is an obvious lie (except for the line: “I wanted to make a physical impact on the game”), and he got off because this is sports-mad Australia and Sydney’s best shot at a Grand Final in decades. I’ll still barrack for the Swans, but this is no way to clean up the game.