The AFL whacked Carlton over Elijah Hollands. But these questions remain unanswered

The Elijah Hollands episode has graduated to the unofficial status of an AFL saga, given that the imbroglio ended with the AFL whacking Carlton with the catch-all of “bringing the game into disrepute”.

Bringing the game into disrepute is one of the AFL’s most ingenious inventions, since it allows head office to punish anyone – players, coaches, presidents, clubs – without necessarily proving that a specific rule has been broken.

It’s a way of saying, we can’t pin you for breaking our rules, but you’ve damaged the game, and we can’t let you go unpunished. “Disrepute” is a wide canvas on which to damn those who’ve fouled the footy nest.

And this is where the AFL landed with Carlton. They were adamant – as most were – that Hollands should not have remained on the field for as long as he did. They deemed it unacceptable and a failing.

The problem was that the AFL couldn’t nail the Blues for the rule that applied in the Hollands case, the one that said clubs were liable and could be fined for leaving a medically unfit player on the field.

The punishment of a $75,000 fine – donated to headspace, the league’s mental health partner, to provide a philanthropic sheen – contained two major motives. First, the AFL wished to make clear that Hollands should have been off the field and that the club must be held accountable.

It was, as all averred, a terrible look to have the player behaving oddly and unable to touch the ball due to his state of mind.

The second motive of the AFL finding was to avoid singling out any individual and, in particular, to make no judgment on the conduct of the doctors and medical team – including the psychologist who was dialled in during the game last month.

This is why Carlton were punished under the catch-all. Had the league pinged the Blues on their “not medically fit” rule, they would run the risk of legal repercussions from Carlton’s medical unit, who had made multiple professional assessments during the game that Hollands could play on.

As with any AFL saga, lawyers piled in to the contest. The Blues had workplace lawyers involved, in part because they were dealing with a prospective WorkSafe investigation, which would take the matter where no club wants it – outside the AFL domain.

The AFL went in hard and were dismayed at Carlton’s handling of Hollands from the outset, but they soon learnt that this case contained wrinkles – “complexities” as they put it – and that it wouldn’t be as easy as offering a player two matches for a dangerous tackle.

Carlton, whatever they did wrong, did not back down from their defence of their medical team.

The upshot is that this was a unique incident – the first instance of a prosecution for a mental health episode during a game – but one that ended in the standard manner: an outcome crafted to tick the necessary boxes, punishing the club without damaging professional reputations or actually providing critical details of precisely where the Blues had blundered.

Several questions remain unanswered.

One is whether Hollands imbibed alcohol, as suspected by some Collingwood players. Hollands submitted to a drug test after the game, although the AFL would not respond to questions of substance, so to speak, citing the confidential nature of drug testing. Whether prescription medication played any role in Hollands’ erratic movements also went unanswered.

Technically, Hollands would have to provide permission even for Carlton to have the outcome of his drug test, to which he was said to have willingly submitted.

Another question left hanging in the ether was when precisely Hollands should have been removed from the field, considering his mental health issues. If he’d gone off at half-time, the suspicion is that this whole affair would have been a one-day wonder. The AFL did not fill in that sizeable blank.

Perhaps the most intriguing unanswered question remains for Carlton to explain on what basis they left him on the field. We know that the doctors – with a psychologist’s input – did not deem him medically unfit in the course of the game. But what was the stance of Voss and the coaches?

The most consequential question, though, lies ahead.

The defensive, slightly angry tone of Voss and the Blues on the Hollands investigation – directed at either the AFL, the media or both – seemed to derive in large part from the reality that they had invested so much time, expertise, care and effort in handling a player whose mental health issues were, yes, complicated.

They had delisted Hollands, then given him a further chance, and taken him back on certain provisos. Carlton’s irritation was that they were in the dock, when they had gone to such lengths to help a young man, with talent, and keep him healthy and in the game.

Has their care and diligence been worth the trouble, worth the distraction that engulfed them for weeks, in an already troubled season?

There are people within the game, at club and even AFL level, who feel that the Hawthorn racism saga nudged some clubs further in the direction of risk-averse recruiting where First Nations players were concerned.

Are footballers with mental health conditions, such as Hollands, who require heavier investments in welfare and management, the next frontier, in which clubs take a hard-headed approach – that they will only take the risk, and allow their resources to be soaked up, for the sake of the super-talented high performers?

They’ll do it for Clayton Oliver, maybe. Or Bailey Smith. But will they take on the only slightly above average players?

It shapes as the most important question from the chapter of Elijah.

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