The double standards at play over Finlayson's penalty compared to Clarko's - Footy Classified

let's get straight to the lead story tonight and that is the 3 we suspension to Jeremy finl first off thoughts uh my thoughts are that he got it wrong uh he realized that straight away um you know the the afl's taken this very very seriously as they should but I'm still uh disappointed in that you know the inconsistencies within the penalties over the last month if Jeremy finlon was a bigger name uh would he have got the three weeks has he been an easy person to do this to in regards to the three weeks compared to what happened with alist Clark so that's where we're going to talk about personality umpiring a little bit later on and all this sort of stuff um and we're going to go through a few things I won't jump ahead of where we're going other than to say we need a little bit more strict guidelines on everything from the drug rules through to this type of thing so he gets three weeks the male uh Damen Barrett is that he would was going to get five four to five they're arguing they cut it back because of his remorse that he instantaneously reported to his football director on the night Chris Davies uh and all these other things they also took into effect that he personally has had his house rocked literally rocks thrown at his house that his wife who was suffering from cancer has uh received vile um U social media and so has he been attacked it's been a complete horrible situation of his own making in the first owning but at the same time it's taken six days to get to this it's been a long tortuous way to get to something that could have been done the very next morning well fraud not incident uh admission of error and guilt and remorse in the immediate aftermath even before he left the ground there was a a closed case that could have been dealt with as early as the weekend and if not the weekend the Monday we get to Wednesday night we've got it um they've arrived at the right outcome today I'm absolutely convinced of that but it does shed light and a lot of questions on what happened seven weeks ago when Alis Clarkson was was walked past with what he did in a similar homophobic space so let's roll through this is Chris Davies from Port Adelaide today there is no excuse for what Jeremy said I think In fairness to Jeremy um you know from the minute that the word left his mouth he's tried to do whatever he could to um to highlight that he wanted to accept responsibility for that fair to say we think that both players and officials should be treated um you know the same in in this regard well the aflpa came out and responded to their CEO in Paul Marsh and I think the key takeaway in this statement is the paragraph We believe the AFL is consistently inconsistent there are double standards in its approach to dealing with players compared to others on behavioral matters also if this type of conduct is a 3-e sanction for a player it should be for everyone involved in the game and it should be clear everyone in the industry upfront rather an open-ended approach that is currently in place which highlights uh one thing for me uh gentlemen is that you don't compound a bad decision in the first place which you started with there Doo because you miss sanctioning um alist Clarkson that doesn't become The Benchmark you get the opportunity to fix a previous mistake unfortunately Jeremy Fin's the first one to get suspension and the next one Jimmy I've got no doubt will be five and six I can confirm from the AFL s my source is in there that it'll have a six plus next time up and the quote that SL is uh three will be was going to be four or five and it'll go up exponentially quote until it stops so it's just going to go they've decided now that's it everyone should get the message on three and and all the incidents around fin would have been easier we I think all agree that had there been a statement made and a decision of a hard nature on LS Clarkson this could have been dealt with really quickly and decisively and and hopefully it would have been an end game for this type of behavior so they're saying they being the inside of the AFL that Clarkson was provoked it was a two and for no one complained about it blah blah blah what we're finding out is when the SNM players were investig were interviewed by the AFL investigation officer they were upset quote SN and players were upset so they came out the bombers it we didn't like this at all no you're not going to get the old code out of this we thought it was way out of line and that strengthened the arm of the AFL that this is where people are on this issue there's an element of playing semantics with words I mean we as a program and individuals I think all of us have chosen not to publicly repeat the words that Clarkson issue the single word Clarkson and also what finon offer they're different words but to me playing semantics around what they mean and how they're used and and how homophobic they are I think it's murky any use of of any homophobic word is that and as such it should be treated the same way