Mongrel light at the end of the tunnel

by NEIL BELFORD

THE Mongrel Punter is fast becoming my favourite football journalist, because he understands the gestalt of sport, and because he has written the best (and most humorous) appraisal of the FreoFC psyche. On topic though, he also exposes the 'Tunnelling' debate for the nonsense that it is. What a sobriquet - only a hype-fest sport like basketball could invent a meaningless pejorative like 'tunnelling'.

Reiwolt is a sook, The Poet is a sook, Mick Malthouse where the rights of backmen are being upheld - is not, this is known. What is new, and has become clear, is that Ross Lyon has sook capability. Paul Roos might be a bit shellshocked, but I think it would have helped the whole debate if he had just got on the front foot and told Lyon and St Kilda to shove it. What Lyon is suggesting is that because when you stand on the ground you can be bumped while attempting to mark, you should jump into the air and then have the ump protect you because you happen to be half a metre above where you would otherwise have been

If you jump in the air and the ball is within five metres, the bloke on the ground has every legitimate right to push you in the side, or from the front, and further more there is no reason why he can't do it with a shoulder or with open hands. As long as he has eyes for the ball, doesn't hold on, or push in the back, no rule is broken, and so it should remain. Getting down again is your problem - as it always is for hangers and screamers, successful or otherwise.

Hand wringing over what may be a problem in the game of basketball is a load of rubbish. Jumping for the ball, and the contacts and collisions that surround that act are one of the greatest features of our game. What matters most is timing - just ask Leo Barry. The mongrel Punter appears in The Age. Mongrel Punter.

28 March 2008

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