HoldenV8 wrote:On one hand I feel for the players, though I will admit that part of me still believes that they are grown men and had every right to not take any pills or injections, although I do understand that they trusted their club and their coach just like any of us trusts our doctor. I do think the players (somewhat unfairly) are the ones paying the heaviest price for the EFC's screw up of giant proportions. Their reputations will be forever tarnished over this.
I tend to agree HV8. To take a strictly professional viewpoint, they are grown men who are expect to take responsibility for themselves and what goes into it, particularity when its injected through a needle. Let them cop it.
On the other hand, I think that's too simplistic a way to approach the issue, and I think it ignores what (up until now) we have expected from football clubs in terms of ethics. Footy clubs have been presented and operate on the idea that they are environments built upon trust and teamwork, where young immature men enter and leave as fully-developed men; for example, we all know that Hawthorn's not called "the Family Club" because everyone who works and plays there are related, and many successful coaches back in the day are spoken of as playing a father figure role. Footy clubs at the lower, grass-roots levels who produce our AFL footy playing talent operate as honest community organisations where trust and teamwork are taught as fundamentals to success.
In this footy club model I would've thought the players would be entitled to the benefit of the doubt and trust what senior football management were providing to them. I think it's a bit rich to expect every player to question critically what is being provided to them by their bosses when they've come up through a system based on trust and acceptance at face value. Involvement in a club situation where everyone is working together to win a flag runs contrary to the idea that you should seek legal, medical or pharmaceutical advice every time you're administered something because your coach who you're conditioned to trust implicitly might not be 100% trustworthy.
This model is clearly not what the AFL clubs now represent, and perhaps yesterday was the collision with proper professionalism that the AFL had to have. For years it has paraded itself as a 'professional' sport, yet this isn't really true. 'Professional' in the AFL really just means 'full-time' participation in training and preparation activities in exchange for high wages that the players can comfortably live off. Yet many players continue to behave at standards that are far from 'professional' and would not be accepted in other disciplines and professions. In fact, most are probably too immature to understand what the concept means, given those who are in professions don't start until they're about 23-ish, and when they do they're at the bottom of the professional ladder.
Now it has been made abundantly clear to those players who participate in the AFL system that they must properly protect their own interests at all costs, and never ever trust what they are given or told by their employer. The risk to your reputation and worth as a commodity tradeable in the AFL marketplace is too great. It is now dog eat dog, each man for himself, and lawyer and chemist yourself up. Welcome to the (new) jungle.
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2016 9:55 pm