Article
Cringing at draws
What is it about draws that brings out the stupids from players, officials & commentators in Australian sport?
Why does someone like Patrick Smith, having sensibly examined, inter alia, our third drawn V-AFL Grand Final in –
HERE: Can-do Eddie can’t avoid life in straitjacket
– just ignore how, during the 26 weeks of the premiership, the competition differentiates among draws at different stages of the season?
Smith outlines how draws get different treatment:
“Draws are permitted from rounds one to 22; extra time is compulsory in the first three weeks of the finals; extra time is abandoned for the grand final; extra time applies in a grand final rematch”,
but seems to imply that no explanation or rationale exists, but simply sneers: “Plain stupid? Absolutely.”
Is Smith – surely he couldn’t be so obtuse – unable to see why these differences? Is he implying that a Grand Final is no different from any other match? That he can’t see that, while a H&A^ draw in one Round has no effect on the scheduling of those following, a draw in a pre-GF Final does? (Just ask the 1990 Essendon team.)
Next in silliness are those drongos pushing the ultimate “plain stupid”: a draw is worse than a loss, or is ‘unfair’.
Yet, how many times do we hear commentators observing, and even coaches & captains admitting, that there are matches which ‘neither side deserves to win’, or that ‘in such a closely hard-fought encounter, a draw was a fitting result’?
Or that a draw is somehow ‘unbearable’?
Message for these cry babies: harden TF up!
More widely, we get dills, many of whom should know better, tell us that a draw in Test cricket is not a result, quite oblivious to the fact that to win in Test cricket a team must do two things well, or three, if you count fielding. P’raps this level of complexity is one step too far, particularly for simple minds* who see things in, errh, black & white.
Not to forget the now completely predictable whines that if overseas sports, especially foreign codes of football, don’t have draws then neither should we in. Resurrect yourself, A A Phillips – you and your essay The Cultural Cringe are needed again –
(Actually, it, and he, needs to be permanently on call.)
Memo to these sooks: it’s Australian Football, and we will decide the rules of our game, and the circumstances in which they apply.
Cultural cringe? Yes. “Plain stupid? Absolutely”.
^ ‘regular season’, for those who speak trans-Pacific.
* often found in academia – strange that.
PS: more silliness, with a couple of quirkies, at –