‘Lack of respect’: Crocs seething at AFL Cairns penalty on eve of finals
SPORT
PORT Douglas officials are disappointed at the AFL Cairns handling of a decision to dock its reserve grade side four premiership points, relegating them from second to third position for the upcoming finals series.
The Crocs reserves will now miss out on the all important double chance and face a cut-throat elimination final this Saturday after it was deemed they played two ineligible players in their final home-and-away match last weekend.
Under a new rule introduced at the start of the season to cater for the new Pyramid Power reserves grade team, when a club has a senior team bye - as Port Douglas did last week - only four players who played in that senior team the previous week are eligible to play in the reserves.
The Crocs were found to have six senior players line up against the Power in their 138-point win last week.
While admitting they’d made a mistake and vowing to cop the punishment ‘on the chin’, Port Douglas president Greg Nicholson was seething at the ‘lack of respect’ shown by AFL Cairns president Gary Young, who excused himself from an arranged meeting with Nicholson and Crocs coach Brad Cooper yesterday morning.
“We are massively disappointed with the president of the competition, who thought it was more important to go and speak to a surveyor rather than to hear us out,” Nicholson said.
“The fact that he chose not to listen to us over an incident that has a massive effect on the upcoming finals series is extremely disappointing.“
We presented our case and showed that it was unintentional and that it wouldn’t have had any bearing on the outcome of the result.
“We also explained that we had insufficient resources at the time to actually have picked this up. We asked them to give us a fine or a suspended fine but in their wisdom they’ve decided to whack us with this.”
Compounding things, Crocs team manager and Vice-President Chris Bradsworth, who would usually handle the team sheets, was away last week after his brother passed away.
The Crocs were also seen to be in breach of a rule preventing players who played nine or more senior games in rounds 1-14 to play reserves in the club’s senior team bye in the last six rounds of the year. Ash Davidson and Ross McCrae were ineligible under this rule after playing much of the first half of the season in the seniors.
Cooper said the penalty had a massive effect on the club and was harsh.
“We made a mistake and we understand the rules are the rules, but all we wanted was a chance to be heard and we didn’t get that,” he said.
“The punishment doesn’t fit the crime. This had little to no affect on the bearing of any result, we won by over 100 points (in the reserves) and no offence to the Power, but we would have still won by 10 goals with two less players.”
AFL Cairns said they had ‘empathy’ for Port Douglas and were certain the incident was an oversight and accidental. Young described the situation as ‘unusual’.
“We are 100 per cent confident that Port (Douglas) has made an inadvertent error,” Young said.
“However the integrity of the new rule is very important and the fixed penalty embedded into the Rule has to be enforced. All other clubs have abided by it this year and we can’t set precedents for the future by not enforcing the penalty. “
The incident will do nothing to temper the us-against-them mentality of Port Douglas heading into what shapes as a electric finals series. The Crocs are the only non-Cairns based team in the competition and are a hot favourite to take out this year’s AFL Cairns senior premiership.
The Port Douglas reserves will now take on Centrals Trinity Beach on Saturday in the elimination final while the seniors meet South Cairns Cutters with a grand final spot up for grabs.
