Eddie McGuire has launched a passionate defence of controversial Collingwood youngster Jack Ginnivan amid the outrage surrounding his perceived staging for free kicks.
The former Collingwood president said the umpires’ treatment of Ginnivan on Saturday made him “really upset”, before warning that the AFL’s tweak to high-contact interpretation would lead to a “minefield opening” or a player suffering a serious head injury.
The AFL on Tuesday revealed a change to high-contact interpretation due to the questionable acts of Ginnivan and other players.
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“Where the tackle is reasonably applied, and there is prior opportunity, and the ball-carrier is responsible for the high contact via a shrug, drop or arm lift — holding the ball should be called,” the AFL said in a statement.
McGuire spoke with fervour on Nine’s Footy Classified on Wednesday night.
“Forget that I’m a Collingwood man. OK?” McGuire said.
“I watched the game on Saturday between Collingwood and Adelaide, and I was really upset. I was concerned, I was really concerned in a big way.
“I watched all the games on the weekend and I watched different games of football at three different grounds … you can’t tell me that the umpires weren’t absolutely pre-occupied on Jack Ginnivan.
“I haven’t heard anything from the AFL to say that that was umpired in a particular way, different to anyone else.
“I think the red herring was what came out this week.”
McGuire then turned his attention to the danger that the change to interpretation could pose for the ball-carrier.
“I’m really concerned that you’ve now got carte blanche to go in and belt a bloke if you think he’s dropped his knees,” McGuire said.
“Is this dropping your head, (where you) used to be able to protect yourself like a boxer, tuck your head in under your shoulder, lower your body to go for the ball, set yourself for a bump?
“I reckon we’re going to see blokes going, ‘Right, it’s on here’. In with a punch.
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“A rule that’s supposed to stop concussion is going to, in my mind, promulgate concussion, or at least (lead to) people throwing dangerous head-high tackles.
“Your going to go to the tribunal and have biomechanists saying, ‘He dropped his knee, he did this’.”
McGuire wants the AFL to stay true to an age-old rule of the game.
“I just think there is an old-fashioned rule in this game — if you hit somebody in the head it’s a free kick … I would like us to go back to the old days when they came into the under-11s and the umpire said, ‘If you go the ball, the ball will protect you, and I will protect you as the umpire’,” McGuire said.
“Now we’re going to have all these different ways (of interpreting). ‘Did he drop his knees? Did he do this?’.
“Geez, I’ll tell you what: there’s a minefield opening up here.
“If someone gets their head knocked off next week, gets their jaw broken, see what happens.”
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