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Sport Nation
Healy: Two weeks, what a farce
Gerard Healy • June 10th, 2025 8:15 pm
Tonight we celebrate the careers of players of the past that have contributed greatly to the game.
It’s a joyous memorable occasion for those being inducted and their families and an opportunity for us all to celebrate their careers.
But tonight, it could well have been a very different occasion but for a couple of millimetres, and a subtle tilt of the head to the left, we would be all here in collective shock and despair, wondering whether the night should be postponed, because a fine young player was fighting for his life with a major high cervical spinal injury.
His career had been cut short in the most horrific of circumstances only a few days ago.
Of course I speak of Adam Cerra, whose own dreadful technique in bending over to pick up the ball head first made him incredibly vulnerable to the totally negligent attack on the contest by Sam Durham, clearly oblivious to the potential outcome.
Durham's normal attack on the football is usually admirable and he is vastly out performing draft expectation because of it. He’s a great asset to the Bombers and wins universal admiration for his desperation and commitment.
But he got this so badly wrong that he’s lucky tonight, not to be sitting at home working out a way to unwind that moment in time.
Of course that can’t be done and we gather here tonight, continuing to live in this blissful cocoon of ignorance, that all is okay with the game, with the AFL machine thinking they’ve done their duty by giving Durham a two week suspension.
That’s it, nothing more to be said, just a pitiful two weeks suspension because that’s what the table added up to in the mind of MRO Michael Christian.
Now it’s not his role to be an activist, or to make policy on the run, but it is his role to assess the potential danger for injury of the action he’s looking at.
This should have been sent to the tribunal as it was the most dangerous act I’ve seen on a football field for 10 years.
That was an act that has absolutely no right to go through a players mind as something that’s acceptable even under the greatest moments of desperation.
That was an act that should have immediately resulted in a universal cry for 6 weeks suspension, because of the clear risk for spinal injury rather than the focus on the possibility of concussion.
Do we really need another spinal injury victim before we act in a seriously meaningful way?
And how the AFL commission and the executive, from Richard Goyder and Andrew Dillon down, can sit here tonight with a smile on their face and a drink in their hand, when Adam Cerra's life, certainly as a footballer, was millimetres away from being over, and we’ve given a pathetic two week suspension is worse than bewildering.
Surely we owe the legacy of the late Neil Sachse a more meaningful reaction to this near catastrophe.
Michael Voss and Carltons coaching staff, in fact every club, should take this as an incredibly lucky reminder to do basic contest training and education on the fundamentals of attacking the ball in a head on way, and get the technique right at both ends of the spectrum because clearly there is a gap.
Drill it into their brains, while they’re still connected to their arms and legs, every Tuesday or Wednesday night for the rest of the season.
10 minutes a night, make it 15 if you please on technique. Yes it’s that important.
Turn your body to protect your head in front on contact circumstances and you never ever bump a head, particularly head on. Practice what to do!!
And every junior and senior coach, at all levels and the so-called elite player coaches in our development programs, don’t wait for the AFL directive or manual to come from the ivory tower.
It may never arrive, as they appear asleep at the wheel on this.
Two weeks, what a farce. You get three for a tackle gone wrong.
Take it upon yourself to bullet-proof your charges, men and women, girls and boys, and give them the best chance of excelling at the game, enjoying the game without ending up in a wheelchair or worse.
That’s far more important than craft or skill, until that message is seared into the players response mechanisms under pressure.
Knowing that it’s become an essential part of training and education would be far more worthy of celebration tonight than what’s to come. Tonight’s incredibly important but so too the lives of all of our players.
So we move on albeit frustration for me with a tinge of anger with those governing the game, with the season stalling ever so briefly, as the who’s who of football stroll into the ballroom to celebrate the latest additions to the Hall of Fame.
