This from the AFL webiste
http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/ ... fault.aspx
"Milne and O'Brien clashed verbally after the St Kilda forward gave away a free kick for sliding feet-first into Darren Jolly during the third quarter of the game.
The offending taunt by Milne to O'Brien was not picked up on TV microphones, but events before and after the exchange were.
As O'Brien came in to take Jolly's kick, with the ruckman on the ground winded, he and Milne argued.
Officiating umpire Dean Margetts could be heard through a TV microphone saying, "OK, OK, enough of the language."
Milne was then heard saying to O'Brien, "What are you going to do, f**khead? What are you going to do?"
Margetts awarded a 50m penalty to Collingwood, saying, "That language is unacceptable""
and Scott Watters's thoughts from a different article on the same website:
http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/ ... fault.aspx
"The players are under enormous pressures, but you do still have a choice on what you say and how you react," Watters said on Friday morning.
"So Stephen's choice of vocab was poor.
"You need to be disciplined, you need to be controlled, and it's not about laying blame at the doorstep of someone else."
Asked if he felt the AFL had taken political correctness too far, Watters said it was important to maintain perspective.
"I'm not going to enter into that debate, but one thing I check myself on all the time is … trying to put myself in a player's shoes," he said.
"He (Milne) is a player that cops an enormous amount of criticism and taunts from opposition supporters, who probably hadn't received a couple of free kicks to that point that he though he might, all those pressures that players are under.
"Keep a perspective on that, but still ultimately you have a choice on how you respond, and good athletes and good teams … their discipline is outstanding.
"So regardless of whether you think it's political correctness gone made or whatever, you control that as an individual."
Sounds like Margetts wanted to reproach Milne and teach him a lesson about manners. I hope he's been consistent throughout all his games and zeroing in on anyone who he feels is excessively rude and/or aggressive. How many games has he officiated? How many similar reports has he lodged? Of course there is the chance that Stephen Milne is the only player he has ever encountered who has been so uncouth.
Yah, sure.
Regardless, I think it was probably wise of the club to fine the player and take care of it in-house rather than it becoming a wider AFL issue. Of course, it's all over the papers, but Milney was a villain before, he'll be a villain after. We still love him.
I'm glad that the club is handling it more maturely than some of the posters on this thread. I don't know where a lot of you have been for the last 20 years, but this is not a new idea. If you question why we need to be so sensitive about gay discrimination, then take a look at this ''nostalgic' post from howlinwolf, from page 8 of this thread, dated this year 2012:
howlinwolf wrote:Unfortunately it isn't going to stop. It's a juggernaut that doesn't involve sensibilites. The world is obsessed with political correctness to the point we will have gay marriages accepted.
I don't care what they call their union but it isn't marriage.
The Oxford Dictionary defines marriage as between man and woman. Next we'll be calling an apple an orange due to PC.
Yes, it's idiotic and not representing the general sentiment on here, yet still unpleasant to read.
Like Margetts with Milne, I found this post distasteful and considered reproaching the poster.
Unlike Margetts, I thought again and decided it wasn't worth it. Perhaps the difference in context is the reason why Margetts didn't withdraw his report after reflection: I am not the appointed officiator of this forum, so it's not my place. Even if I was a mod though, I'd think twice because although this is technically a public forum, it is not being read by great numbers of sports fans or televised, and is seldom referred to outside itself, if that makes sense. If it was a newspaper and I was an editor, I wouldn't print it. If howlinwolf had said it on TV, and I was the producer, I might have told him off, or even suspended him. What about you, what would you have done?
Maybe if Margetts was just watching in the crowd, or it was just a suburban league game, he wouldn't have been moved to make this complaint. He may have considered that as the appointed officiator of a high profile game of great interest to the general public (at least AFL fans), he needed to be visibly strict on behaviour.
This may have even been a directive of the AFL; stamp out all unseemly behaviour that casts a negative or 'unenlightened' shadow over our 'brand', if you like. Even if it didn't come from AFL directly, with all the fines and bans for vilification and such, you can see what the AFL wants to do. I'd imagine that Dean Margetts will be getting a pat on his head from the Dear Leader at AFL House about now.
Scott Watters is bang on, again. Milney needed to be more disciplined, full stop. Whatever it's fair or not, there is sadly only one way to do his job and that is the AFL way. I'm sure he'll be happier mouthing off to his hearts content in whatever suburban league he falls back into after retirement, but for now he has to control himself.
As for Margetts, he has made a rod for his back now, appointing himself as manners coach for the 18 clubs of the AFL and all their players, having to report anyone who he feels might have used excessively bad language. I'd imagine that each of his future games would now garner at least one similar report... or perhaps he'll just decide that he's made his point, and feel no further need to reprimand anyone based on displaced aggression; yeah, I've got a feeling it will be the latter.
Harry O won't lose any sleep, won't worry about what Milney said, is thankfully oblivious to the dozens of idiots on this site and thousands more around Australia who don't like him because "he thinks he's so good" and he's from Brazil and his girlfriend's called Fuzzy, etc. He isn't at fault for the report, he can absolve himself of blame. He never has any problem containing Milney, but now he knows exactly how to stop him. Our players have done the same to excessively wound up opposition players in the past (Boomer Harvey, Scott Camporeale, etc).
The world's homosexual community will be fine too, I'm sure they take any homophobic comments by footballers as read anyway. Progress continues but there are some limits to what can be achieved in 30 years. Maybe Aker was right after all. Football just isn't ready. The fans and players that is, not the administrators.
That leaves people like some of us, people who see the damage done by homophobic discrimination (type
teen gay suicide into google and check out some of the results) but also can see that this was neither vilification or really homophobia, (i.e. Milne used the word HOMO because he's grown up believing that that is an appropriate insult for a sensitive man, not because he hates gays). What the hell do we do? Keep pretending these two situations are unrelated?