A MOMENT in football can define a man who plays it.
A moment, be it with a good or bad outcome, can override achievements or failures accrued over several years.
Josh Hunt endured a moment last Friday night. A negative moment, a moment which, when added to a couple of others similar to it over a 12-year career, has seen his courage, character and manhood questioned.
Watch the incident
It is wrong and unfair that this is happening.
Hunt dropped a ball he should have marked at the MCG in Geelong’s match against Collingwood. The ball was high, Dane Swan was charging at him, and in that split second moment he would love to revisit, Hunt tapped at it instead of committing to grab it. The ball fell into Swan’s hands.
Hunt flinched. So what. Unless you’re Jonathan Brown or Joel Selwood or Daniel Kerr, pretty much everyone has on a footy field at some stage.
Hunt made a mistake. Big deal. Name one person in any facet of life who hasn’t.
The scrutiny and sweeping statements made on players who choose to look twice before going for the ball can be too extreme.
Too much focus can be placed on a player who hesitates before committing. Sometimes it is smart to take a look.
Jonathan Brown wouldn’t have had his face caved in as regularly in recent years if he had taken a glance sideways.
Hunt’s teammates Joel Selwood and Jimmy Bartel wouldn’t have been knocked out as much had they even occasionally adopted a more cautious approach to the ball.
It is players like Brown and Selwood who almost make it unfair on others. Their courage benchmark, unfortunately, becomes the courage benchmark for everyone.
But it is set at an impossible level, and all of us who report on, analyse and cover AFL should at least partially take that into account before we make cover-all observations on those who play it.
There are incidents that threaten the health of players in every single match. Because of the scrutiny, players are nearly always too afraid not to put their livelihoods on the line.
Richmond’s Matt Dea did just that in round five against West Coast. He went back with the ball and was crunched by Josh Kennedy in an incident that was never going to end any other way.
There is courage and there is stupidity. Dea was almost stupidly courageous that day. And that is not meant as criticism, simply as an observation on the expectations that Dea and nearly every other footballer now feels he must meet.
Josh Hunt is not selected to play for Geelong for his unflinching approach to every single loose ball. He is selected to play because he is a very good kicker of a football, can read the play well, and usually beats or breaks even with an opponent.
He has benefitted from being part of an extraordinary club, but he has compiled a very good career at that club.
He’s played in three of the four Grand Finals Geelong has made in the past five seasons, for two premierships. He would have played in all four had he not damaged a knee in 2009. He’s played 173 matches for that extraordinary club.
That it’s been open season on him since last Friday is crazy.
Had the ball he tapped fallen into a teammate’s hands, or fallen to the ground without Swan touching it, nobody would have felt the need to dissect his character.
Something has to give, not just in the way some players play this game, but on the observations made by those who comment on it.
Twitter: @barrettdamian
