Another AFL mess has the league and its umpires at odds. Who said what to whom in Perth that led to misinformation and questions of integrity.
The Suns ready themselves for one of the most important games in their history, prime time special occasion, vaunted opponent.
And reflecting on the indigenous champions in their care Simo and Horse with their stories of some of the greats of the game.
We talked about his step into it, embrace all.
Of it in the room and Rent it's unedifying for a senior coach to do that. They're on the side of Cautia with the brain tape, the man on they played the best footy I've ever seen at the start of the season, and in president left the couple order said, of course they do.
Is the stuff that legends are made of. What is holding them ball?
I don't think I could answer it clearly right now that I can do.
Something wrong, you know, and I need the game and the boards.
Actually the fans, lover and with no fans, no through sixty year old?
What is it about umpiring in Perth all day? Gads, I've had this nagging sense of whispers in the sky.
I don't know what The Statute of Limitations is for that, because I was involved in that, Jared.
I was at the cold face of the whispers in the sky, the fateful Plaine trip, coming back from perse and cured to v Frio.
And here we are again with another story that's emanating out of Perth.
Six days, three statements, still going, staggering.
It, going to put a full stop to it. I feel like you, well, I've given you your head tonight. I think you're going to do us proud.
All right, here's what we have lined up for you. Simmer and Horse, Adam Simpson and John Longmeyer Horses. You've never seen him before. I want to distance myself from.
This, right from the eye. I want to get right in the middle of it.
Tony Armstrong is with us and the teams for Gold Coast and Hawthorne, and there's plenty of story to tell there. And then First Crack Preview immediately following us, Ben Dixon, David King, Lee Montagne, the strategies at Players. We look towards round ten Wednesday D Day thanks to Ozzie Broadband gas who is it?
D Day four?
Give me this one Friday night against the Blues at home. They're three and six precariously placed. They haven't got a whole lot coming back to your ship. There's a lot in the wings. Then they've got Melbourne, Adelaide and Richmond before the bye.
So this is D Day for this great footy club. We've been competing at the top end for a long long time.
Coming off a Grand Final, they don't want to be another statistic if a Grand finalist that got badly beaten and weren't able to back it up and play finals for the the next year. And that is where it's heading at the moment. They can do something about it on Friday night.
What about you give me the blues.
I'll take the other side of that coin because it is a D Day encounter. They've won four out of five. The salvage mission is on there scrapping their way to get square with the Ledger Mart the SCG they have played out since nineteen ninety three. They have won twice, so they're two and seven across more than thirty years and there have been some fearful hidings along the way. They went there this corresponding game last year and got beaten by fifty two points and conceded seventeen goals.
There is no excuse, not with the.
Way Carlton's defense is now populated, and not with the makeshift nature of Sydney's attack. Get busy, take them down, win in foreign territory, square the ledger and build some momentum.
They concede seven een goals against the worst scoring team in the competition.
Right now, they're in all sorts. It's stacked.
It's been Friday night.
You're in charge. I am, I'm holding the ford here.
I'll we'll do the great pregame and then the big core, which will be fantastic.
All right, let's get into it. Top of the agenda the AFL's third attempt to try to clear up what happened in Perth around the Lockey Schultz concussion. Six days, three statements. It opened a chasm between the league and its umpires and has raised questions of leadership, decision making and integrity.
It hasn't changed too much from our perspective. Obviously a little bit surprised with some of the internal communications, but from our perspective, it doesn't really change our position, which was we felt like on the night that the play should have been stopped. But I think everyone's in general agreement with that.
Yeah, ye did you play.
We're going to watch you go that go.
We're okay where okay, right, understand you watch it.
Felt like out here in the moment that like someone's in a state like that and we're still running around chasing a footy.
It's didn't feel right. It's up the other end of the ground.
I think, you know, there's there's reason to sort of let play go. But but as soon as you know there's any chance of the play coming near the injured player, you stop the game.
Be kind of just helping it. Balls coming to.
If they struct I understand, but that's not where he struck, had the ball, he had the ball.
He's hacked the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they can't.
I think there's been times where it hasn't quite been you know, we had an, as you said, our incident the week before which we can talk I can comment on a little bit more. But you know, I think there's some there's some issues going on at the moment that I'm sure the AFIL would much rather be gone better.
It is the sort of story that erodes public faith in an administration, and it has.
Warts all over it.
If I was going to take a stab at it, Gaz, I would lay it out like this, I reckon an AFL's stafferrang the umpires coach. In the post game. There were crossed wires, which meant that the subsequent clarification that was issued was wrong. The AFL never checks its vision and audio Channel seven does. The AFL says the umpires misled them. The umpires had never been asked. The umpires are labeled lies on TV, and there's a university lecture
in how it all gets resolved from here. So the third statement has come from Laura can just a short time ago. Our process in determining what happened Thursday night fails and for that we take full responsibility. Today we have determined there was a miscommunication from members of the umpiring department, not the field umpires, which formed the basis
of our initial public statement on Friday. Those team members have been counseled and reminded of the importance of ensuring our process is fully followed regarding these types of incidents, and in this instance it was not. I have asked the GM of Football Performance, Josh Marny, to review these processes to ensure the right information is communicated and to ensure this does not happen again. Everyone including our umpires, are aligned in ensuring the health and safety of players
continues to be the utmost priority in the AFL. Has been in regular contacts with the AFLA today. This is bumbling of the highest order and it is chastening for the administration of the biggest sport in the land.
We'll take a stab that the way you set it out is exactly how it happened.
So the umpires are the ones that have been wrong in this most grievously. Now they're the ones who have got the biggest issue. As you say, they've been labeled liars. They've been set up for a full game suspension when in fact what they're accused of doing didn't happen. Now, there are other components that we can get into about whether or not the game should have been stopped, but right now that's the biggest issue on the chain of communication and how it works at AFL level is in disarray.
Disarray.
It takes your breath away, really, and think about there are four umpires involved. Simon Meredith is the most decorated of them and I can only imagine how he has felt across the period of these six days, never asked.
He was never asked in this whole process. A man who's umpired five hundred games of football was never asked. I think that's enough right there. It tells you how badly this.
Has been handled.
And then the second part is the AFL never checked its own vision and audio, which is so this is they didn't do their work last week, they didn't do their work this week.
It's amazing on the back of a week that they had that. You then think and again, yeah, we can talk about hindsight, but these are organizations that are employed to do this job and not make these mistakes.
Here it so a week down.
The track after they had this issue, can't have a listen to tape just won't take long.
We've got the audio there, we'll find out.
We'll be able to definitively say Paul Marsh saying here that they're equally disappointed that if AFL fad approach with review a serious on field incident, but acknowledge that they've taken responsibility.
Also talked about the safety of the player. I agree with him on that the.
Game should have stopped at the earliest convenience and anyone that takes issue with that. He says, oh, the balls up the other endit. This was a serious brain injury, Jared. This is not a saw no, or a sore ankle, or we've stopped the games in the past because players are out of breath. So when his hand is stuck in the motion that it was and then you hear that umpire say ooh when he falls back down, then
you know you're dealing with a really serious issue. So just stop the game in mind, and I spoke to a medic coach today, won't say who.
Obviously he had to come off on the stretcher.
This is an area that I'm not so I went and deliberately spoke to someone else and his comment to me was, of the fifty thousand people in that stadium, the one person who was least in a position determine whether he ran off the ground was Lockie Shieltz. So there's learnings in that as well. And I know it's a I saw the doctors trying to stop him and he was pretty headstrong. If that's a neck injury, then he stays down. It doesn't matter if he wants to
get up. During you stay down and you do not move that's that has to be the messaging there.
But anyway that's.
Getting away from that pisoute the tightening of that principle will serve the game well. So it didn't instantly occur to me that I didn't I thought the depiction that play has been allowed to go on dangerously, that didn't ring true to me.
But to hear you explain it like that, it doesn't even have to be dangerously like this was. We have to show it again. This is when you see that arm motion.
And then he got up and went down to the ground again, and the doctors were doing their best to stop the game. Okay, if everyone says, oh, he's okay, he's okay, all right, what harm's done.
It's a brain injury.
Stopped the game for however long, get him off the ground started again, and so hopefully there's some learnings from that as well. But in terms of where this goes, the umpire's relationship with the AFL is strained anyway.
I think it's fair to say, and this is not going to help.
How damaging to the leadership of the AFL. Do you think, particularly in the public's eyes, to have two weeks in a row episodes that have taken all week to resolve, or it looked like initially the judgmental of the process was wrong.
I think the public's.
The fault position is to doubt the AFL anyway, which which is a really difficult position for them. No one barracks for the so they're coming from behind, and the last two weeks have put them even further behind you. And you're a better place to talk about the machinations of what goes on and AFL house. You know they are trying to get an extra football head to get into that department, like we're talking the garlic or a Tom Harley or an a meat Bains type.
And when you see this thing unfiled, then you're not surprised.
This is still the betting down period of a new administration and it is an unflattering picture which they should be now chronically aware of. I think to have these episodes happen two weeks in a row, there's not strong leadership from the top that that's not This chief executive's
long suit is not that is. I think the industry could use some of that at the moment, and then the decision making internally and the layers to that is pretty well laid bare in an episode like this, and it's hard to it's hard to put that back together in a short period of time.
So I can understand the coaching fraternity lack of confidence permeate throughout the rest of the competition.
Yes, yeah, I think that's very clear.
And because of the relationship is the AFL dictates a lot to the clubs and that creates a natural tension. When the AFL is mismanaged in such a way, the resentment is it's forceful.
And how critical is the appointment of the the role or the title that they've advertised it as, but it is the Simon Garlic, Tom Harley and meet. How critical is it that appointment gets money?
It is critical.
But the two key planks are in place, the leader of the organization and the leader of the football department. They are in place and have been for a period of time. Now it's their authority to fully establish an exercise. A two ice might come in and it might end up being the public face of it, but it sits with Andrew Dllon and Laura Kine right now to show that they are capable of running the organization, the sport and that they have a vision for it and a
competence to deliver against that vision. That's what's missing. I think at the moment.
Have they failed the game in the past two weeks? Definitely?
And does your confidence now waiver in their ability to lead in the manner.
That you I think they have to get going?
Is what is it going to be on your watch? Do you think they can get there? You have you got the confidence that they can get to that level.
They will have to do significantly better than what we have seen from them so far. So this is the moment I reckon if you get to it, this is the team that is at This is a team that it's three and six. Are you going to amount to anything or not? If you want to boil into the football terms and there's no there's now no room for misstep. We are screaming out for leadership, actual strong leadership, and not just actions, but the words to.
Go with that.
At the moment interesting time, they are.
They are The Willi Reoli story has one phase to go, and that's the return to play and we are all hopeful that that will be Saturday. Today. He was Ken Hinkley today.
His foot is not an issue. We've just got to make sure that he's emotionally in the right spot, which it looks it looks really really positive in that space because he's had a pretty good week.
How is he emotionally?
As I said, he seems like he's in a pretty good spot. He's had a lot of support from our footy club and I think he certainly appreciates it. He's had probably a lot of support from the community now, which certainly also helps.
When do you know, like if he's fully boak out like you know where he said at the moment, seems like you're how do you puty know for it?
We'll see him, We'll watch him, We'll see how he trains and will make sure he's okay. But when he's smiling, he's pretty good when he's smiling, and last week he smile very often.
See will he really smile back on the footy field with an ounce of luck Luke Jackson. So this story has been through a couple of different iterations. When the Victorian media first raised the prospects of the return to Melbourne, it's got nothing to do with Fremantle and nothing to do with his footy.
It's about his private life. It was scoffed that in the West, Samar he dismissed, Yes, And now.
Today been reported as a matter of fact in the West is that Luke Jackson will request to trade back to Melbourne at the end of the year. For Jackson, he's lived a year wherever one assumed he was leaving Melbourne going to Freemantle, and how he is now going to live another year out wherever one assumes that he's going to leave Freemantle and come back to Melbourne.
Yeah, that's a bit to deal with, isn't it. So who knows what's going on outside of the football world. That's for you.
For those that want to comment on this or have got opinion on it, then we've got no comprehension of the issues, the personal issues, So I'll put that on the table. From Melbourne point of view, Yeah, well he would be perfect to come back to the football club to compliment a list that is in a situation where the best player and captain and megastar is getting older and older, and he's already demonstrated that he fits into that group.
Really well, they've got a premiership on board. If it meant getting cozy pick it, I'm not doing the deal. Yeah, okay, that's one non negotion.
That's where I see I can do that because I'm not a list manager, and I want to be a greedy Mailbourn supporter and I want both playing.
But if it come down to it, you know, if freer.
Supporters, if you throw and stuff at that says saying, well, well you on Cozie picking. I'm saying Cozy Piket's contracted for two more years beyond this year and is heading towards the top ten player in the comp in my opinion, don't get rid of him, but also go after Luke Jackson you can, and see if you can management.
There's tension between those two teams anyway, So that is going to ramp up tomorrow night. What a ripper start to the round. This is perfect that Sir Doug Nichols round starts in dar On. It's third versus fourth, so special occasion, prime time, immense consequence, and the teams have a tale to tell. So the Sons didn't make as many changes as maybe was forecast. Moil and Swallow are in for Graham and Rogers, but the Hawks have they took their score early, so there are five changes here.
Barris was already rested on the way and Reeves Scrimshaw Deer plays his first game for the year and the top end and McKay is a welcome return while Impy's away on personal leave. Gunst and Meek Bruce and Hustwait has been dropped.
Yeah, so Lloyd Meek, he's had a fantastic season and so Reees gets an opportunity. The interesting one is Kelsha year Man that we've had in here recently. I think he's got something really special about him and he'll compliment what they've got in their forward half. I think it's a bit of a hole in their whole setup. You know, maybe a child has done a really good job, but to have dear come in, he just does stuff a little bit different. So this is fantastic. This will be
compulsory viewing sit down. We suspect the goal. Okay, so they gave us enough last week to suggest that yep, we can get ready for them perhaps making their first finals appearance. They can rub a stamp it tomorrow night against this really good Hawthorne side.
Who are I don't think.
They're at the absolute best at the moment either, and I reckon Sam Mitchell would be seeing this as an opportunity on Thursday night to go up there and just give them one on the nose, a team that hasn't lost for the last seven times at Darwin.
That would appeal to Sam Mitchell.
Sarah Jones leads out team on Fox Footy. Here it tomorrow, nice. Let's bring in the ex coaches Shelley, Adam Simpson and John Longmire, stories of indigenous champions of the past that they have coached, and then they're going to make us just that little bit smarter week on week.
The cold in.
Say yeah, I'm in Ingria. BLA can eat the pall out run. I want it all because