AFL gets ahead of the game
Australia's biggest winter code tackles CTE; Joseph Sua'ali'i features in The Week That Was; plus there's a hard-trance Weekend That Will Be.
The AFL, previously regarded as one of the sports most likely to obfuscate over the risks associated with repetitive head injuries (RHI) and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), broke cover this week from the Concussion in Sport Group, writing in a submission to an Australian senate commission hearing that there is an “association between head trauma and neurodegenerative disease”.
While the wording might stop some way short of saying there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between RHIs and CTE, the sport did say it “supports and adopts” the recent statements by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) that accept the link between CTE and head trauma.
If you’ve got a spare hundred or so hours, you can go through the submissions here. There’s one from Rugby Australia, which includes that sport’s favourite go-to line: “We also recognise that the science of concussion is extremely complex, contentious and evolving.”
Complex and evolving, yes. Contentious? By design, perhaps.
In its 31-page submission, Rugby Australia uses a lot of words and acronyms, but these three words and letters never appear together: chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
In the weeds of the AFL’s submission was also this note about how they now present the neurodegenerative risks to their players in educational seminars (emphasis is added).
“The presentation includes an outline of the short-term effects of concussion and potential long-term outcomes that may result from concussion and/or repeated head impacts (including adverse effects on mood/mental health and risk of neurodegenerative diseases including Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy).”
Perhaps there was a certain political pressure on the AFL to get ahead of the issue given it was so closely associated with the now discredited Paul McCrory, but the reasons why don’t really matter as much as the fact it has been done.
THE WEEK THAT WAS
It was somewhat ironic, given the above story, to hear Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan, a man who wears the cloak of smugness with the same comfort most of us find in an old T-shirt, citing “player welfare” as one of the key planks of Joseph Sua’ali’i’s impending conversion from league to union.
Back in the 1980s and early ’90s in particular, there was a real tug o’ war between the two rugby codes and because one code officially paid its players, there was only one real winner.
This is not an exhaustive list by any stretch, but John Timu, John Gallagher, Ray Price, Michael O’Connor, Jonathan Davies, Matthew Ridge, Daryl Halligan, Paul Simonsson, Marc Ellis, John Kirwan, Mark Carter, Eion Crossan(!), Frano Botica, Apollo Perelini, and Va’aiga Tuigamala were among some of the rugby talent lost to the 13-man code before rugby went pro.
The shoe is largely on the other foot now and it’s fair to say some of league’s big names have not taken it very well, in particular Phil ‘Gus’ Gould, a man who does a good impression of a melted waxwork when he gets angry.
Upon hearing the news that Sua’ali’i was leaving the Roosters at the end of his contract in 2024 to join rugby for an estimated A$1.6 million per season, Gould said he should go now and not let the door hit him on the arse on the way out.
It hasn’t gone down that well in rugby or league circles, with the Roosters pointing out they’d quite like the explosive talent, whose signature was coveted as a schoolboy duel-code and athletics prodigy, to see out his contract.
Back to McLennan.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” he said. “He wants the international exposure, the big stadiums and the international events. At rugby we are more pro-player. Longer careers, greater life experience, more focused on player welfare and more fun.”
That stirred one of the great clapbacks by veteran league journalist Paul Kent.
“He’s got a bit of an issue, this bloke [McLennan],” Kent said. “He’s driven by ego and he continues to talk about rugby league like … all this bullshit the rugby people carry on about, ‘good on you playing an Eastern seaboard game - we travel the world.’ Well good luck to you.
“The fact is, this is where we live. If you live overseas, go and play rugby union, it’s the biggest code over there.
“But this whole Sua’ali’i [deal] is leveraging rugby league’s popularity, so don’t try to shitpot rugby league and call it a small game. The fact is the athletes are better. As Trent Robinson said today, of any rugby code, league or union, anywhere in the world, this is the premier competition - that’s the fact. That’s why they come here and that’s why they admire the way these guys play football.
“And he tries to get a little publicity off rugby league, I just think the sooner he can shut up the better for everybody.
“He called rugby league people thugs today because they weren’t happy with the way this deal was done. He was the one who did the little clandestine deal and didn’t want rugby league people to know what was going on. Come on, grow up and be a man about it.”
There’s a chance that the only real adult in the room over all this is the 19-year-old Sua’ali’i, who has gone a long way already to setting up himself for life.
Go well, young man.
The Oscar Pistorius story is so grim on so many levels. He is set to attend a parole hearing in the next two days to see if he will be released from prison. It feels timely to revisit this 2013 Vanity Fair deep dive, headlined The Shooting Star and The Model.
But the evidence indicated intentional murder, [detective Hilton] Botha told me. Why would a burglar lock himself in a bathroom cubicle? Why would the victim be shot through her shorts if she was using the toilet in the middle of the night? And why would she have taken her cell phone into the bathroom at three A.M.? (Unsupported media speculation would swirl that Reeva had received a tweet or a text from the South African Rugby star Francois Hougaard, a previous boyfriend, and that that may have ignited Pistorius’s rage.) According to Botha, the bullets had struck her on the right side, which meant that she was not sitting on the toilet but probably crouching behind the locked door. From the location of the bullet casings in the bathroom, the detective believed that Pistorius had fired at the door from less than five feet away. By standing straight and imagining himself pointing a gun at the door, Botha believed that the bullet holes were slanted down, which would indicate that Pistorius had been wearing his prosthetic legs, not, as he would later claim, that he was on his stumps. But why would he enter the very area where he believed the burglar was lurking and begin firing, instead of grabbing his girlfriend and running for cover?
“It can’t be. It’s impossible,” Botha remembered thinking after hearing Oscar’s burglary story.
This is also bloody awful. ESPN have reported the hell out of this hellish story. LISTEN: A story about what happens when the people and institutions that are supposed to protect, fail. If you do click on the link to read, please be aware it contains graphic descriptions of sexual violence.
The first thing most of the world knew about Lauren McCluskey was that she was a Utah track and field athlete who had been killed on campus. Her October 22, 2018, shooting death became national news.
The first thing anyone knew about Melvin Shawn Rowland was that he was a killer, and that he, too, was dead. Stories about Lauren’s slaying didn't provide many details about Rowland - only that he had spent years in prison before he entered, and then ended, Lauren’s life.
But a closer look at the paths that led to Rowland killing Lauren show an agonising series of institutional and individual failures. ESPN spent more than four years interviewing Lauren’s family, friends, and state and local officials, and reviewing thousands of pages of documents and hours of video and audio obtained through open records laws. For weeks before her death, Lauren and her friends repeatedly raised alarms about Rowland with University of Utah campus police and housing departments. Even Rowland’s co-workers and employer had opportunities to intervene but did not, according to police interviews and documents.
The most glaring failures were by campus police. According to state and university investigations, key police personnel were inexperienced and inadequately trained, senior officers did not track Lauren’s case, information wasn’t communicated between shifts, and the chief had an unwritten policy of limiting the department’s contact with Utah’s Adult Probation and Parole office.
Then, after the killing, the university repeatedly botched its response. It took two years for the school to apologise to Lauren’s family and acknowledge mistakes.
THE WEEKEND THAT WILL BE
I’ve been coerced into watching and listening to seven hours of bangin’ dance tunes being performed by a Symphony Orchestra in the Auckland Domain tomorrow, so if you see me dancing up a (sand)storm, say hello. It does mean, however, I’ll be watching a few replays rather than live sport.
My overriding impression from the first ODI against Sri Lanka was just how hard it is to adjust to different conditions… and I’m not talking about the tourists’ pathetic collapse. When I watched Henry Shipley make his debut in Pakistan and play subsequent ODIs in India, I have to confess to feeling a bit meh about it all.
I couldn’t see what the selectors saw and even in his first couple of balls at Eden Park I thought his action looked a bit constipated. By midway through his first spell, however, he looked capable of taking a wicket every ball. He was a revelation: tall, angular and just about quick enough to trouble good players. I’m not ready to say he’s Kyle Jamieson MkII, but he’s not the worst facsimile to have while the big blond recovers from his broken back.
NZ v Sri Lanka, 3rd ODI, Hamilton, today from 2pm, Spark Sport
Did I remember to say how much I enjoyed the recent Crusaders v Blues match before I had a short break? I’m expecting similar fireworks from the below, I just have to silence my alerts. Big weekend for sport in Hamilton.
Chiefs v Blues, Hamilton, tomorrow 7.05pm, Sky Sport 1
I mainly restrict my Super Rugby viewing to New Zealand derbies, but regardless, I can’t remember enjoying the start of a season this much in a long time. The same goes for the NRL, which has had a string of dramatic and brutal games. It obviously helps when the team you’re most interested in gives you hope that they’re on the right track, not just in terms of results, but also middle- to long-term planning. If we’re being honest, the Warriors game plan looks about as complex as a Happy Meal, but it also comes with an unmistakable sense of a foundation being laid for some tastier fare. The Sharks at home, however, might be a tad too toothsome.
Cronulla-Sutherland v NZ Warriors, Sydney, Sunday 6.05pm, Sky Sport 4
Lot’s of cars in Melbourne this weekend. The Albert Park circuit does not tend to produce scintillating racing, and yesterday’s routine win by the relentless Shane van Gisbergen in the first of four Supercar sprints was further evidence of that.
Supercars, races 4-6, today 4.55pm, tomorrow 7.30pm and Sunday 12.25pm
Australian GP, qualifying tomorrow 6pm, race Sunday 5pm, all Sky Sport 5
There’s a bunch of other stuff going on that I probably won’t get to, but fill your boots on Major League Baseball’s Opening Weekend, made more interesting this year with the introduction of a pitch clock to speed games up, the elimination of the shift - crowding one side of the infield with an extra fielder - to help batter’s get on base, and slightly bigger base pads to encourage steals. Radical. Staying in America, there’s the NCAA Final Four, which attracts fervent support. Ryan Fox is playing on the PGA Tour in Texas, but wasn’t going too well last time I looked, so it might be a two-day affair for him. Lydia Ko wasn’t going all that flash on the latest LPGA Tour stop either.
In England, the early EPL clash between Manchester City and Liverpool would normally have plenty hinging on it, but not so much this season. Well, not for Liverpool anyway.
At home, there’s a top-of-the-table ANZ Championship clash between the Tactix and Stars in Papakura on Sunday afternoon, too, and probably lots of other stuff I’ve forgotten while hiding myself away for the past 10 days.
90k at the G tonight for a
R3 clash..... Melbourne the place to be this weekend!
I don't know how ahead of the game AFL can be considered to be when this hit only resulted in a two week ban https://twitter.com/FOXFOOTY/status/1637020888506986497?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1637020888506986497%7Ctwgr%5E7dcc0aa496dd340ee81219f26b728442e4ad032f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-33321134951823689096.ampproject.net%2F2303151529000%2Fframe.html