Young Tiger Cops One and Riggsy Knows the MRO Playbook by Heart

Righto, settle in, because I’ve been summoned to this desk again like some sort of tribunal whisperer, and honestly at this point I should just get a laminated badge from AFL House. A promising young Tiger back man has been rubbed out this week for an off-the-ball incident from Sunday, and the competition’s latest crackdown rolls on like it’s got a quota to fill.

The incident itself

From what’s come out, the young fella got done for something that happened away from the ball, the kind of contact that never makes the highlights reel on the night but somehow ends up as Exhibit A come Tuesday. The MRO reviewed the vvision, graded it up, and offered him a sanction he could either wear or fight. No prizes for guessing which one an emerging defender with a career ahead of him usually takes. You cop it, you serve it, you get on with the job. That’s the drill.

Now I want to be careful here because I’m not the Tribunal and neither are you, dear reader, so let’s not go pretending we saw something the match review panel didn’t. He was reported, he was graded, he copped a week or two depending on what’s landed by the time you’re reading this. That’s footy in 2024, or whenever this crackdown finally runs its course, which at Essendon we reckon might be never given how long some sagas can drag on.

Why I’m basically MRO royalty at this point

Look, I barrack for Essendon. We don’t just dip a toe in the disciplinary system, we’ve built a summer house down there. Suspensions, investigations, appeals, more investigations – we’ve seen the lot. So when people ask me why I’ve got such a detailed grip on how the grading matrix works, contact below the knees versus contact above the shoulders, intent versus impact, I just shrug. Mate, I’ve had no choice. It’s like asking a bloke who’s been through three divorces why he knows so much about family law.

So take it as read that when I look at this Tiger incident, I’m not coming at it cold. I’m coming at it as a bloke who has watched his own club’s players graded, downgraded, upgraded again on appeal, and occasionally rubbed out for things that on another week, at another ground, in front of another panel, might’ve been waved through entirely. The inconsistency isn’t a conspiracy, it’s just the nature of a system trying to apply a matrix to a genuinely fast, physical, contact sport. Sometimes it gets there. Sometimes it makes you want to throw the remote at the telly.

The crackdown, and whether it’s actually working

The AFL has been banging on about protecting players in dangerous positions for years now, and fair enough too – nobody wants blokes getting knocked out cold behind play because someone decided to settle a score three passes after the contest actually happened. That’s not toughness, that’s just recklessness, and I don’t reckon many old-school types genuinely miss watching blokes get king hit off the ball.

But here’s my gripe, and it’s one I reckon plenty of fans share regardless of who they follow: the crackdown seems to ebb and flow depending on which week the AFL decides accountability is the flavour of the month. One week it’s high contact getting the strong treatment, next week something similar gets watered down to a fine because a bloke’s had a good judicial history and it’s low impact. It keeps everyone – players, coaches, and blokes like me writing about it on a Tuesday – guessing.

Spare a thought for the kid himself

Whatever you reckon about the broader inconsistency, let’s not lose sight of the fact this is a young bloke building a career. Emerging defenders don’t get an unlimited number of chances to nail down a spot in a settled backline, and every week out is a week some other kid gets a look-in instead. It’s genuinely tough to watch, even as a rival supporter, because you know how hard these blokes work just to get a game, let alone hold one down.

I’d back him to learn from it and come back better for it. Most young players do. The ones who kick on are usually the ones who take the week, don’t cry poor about it publicly, and adjust the aggression without losing the physicality that got them noticed in the first place. That’s a fine line to walk at 20 or 21 years old with cameras on you every second of the game, mind you.

What this means for the rest of the season

If the pattern holds – and at Essendon we’ve tracked enough of these cycles to know a pattern when we see one – expect more of this through the run home. The MRO tends to ramp up scrutiny the deeper we get into the year, partly because every incident carries more weight with finals on the line, and partly because clubs get twitchy and start lobbying (unofficially, of course) about consistency the moment it’s their bloke in the gun.

My honest advice to every list manager in the competition: get your young blokes doing extra video sessions on off-the-ball discipline now, before it costs you a September slot. It’s cheaper than an appeal fee and a lot less painful than explaining to your fans why your best defender is watching finals footy from the couch.

The Riggsy verdict

Do I think the sanction was fair? Genuinely, without having sat through every angle myself, I’ll leave that to the panel who actually watched it in slow-mo eleven times. What I will say is that the crackdown, however clumsily it’s applied some weeks, is at least trying to nudge the game toward less off-the-ball nonsense, and that’s a fight worth having even when it costs us a promising kid for a fortnite.

Just don’t ask me to explain the grading matrix again. I’ve done enough unpaid consulting for the AFL over the years on Essendon’s dime.