On rate per word – dear to the heart of all journalists – Alastair Clarkson has copped the heaviest fine in footy history. The Hawthorn coached was docked $20,000 for commenting on umpires last Saturday. In fact, it was $20,000 for one word, "disgraceful". It's just as well he did not go on.
Disclaimer: I asked him the question. It was a post-match press conference set play. A 50-metre penalty near match's end had put the Gold Coast out of the Hawks' reach. Did Clarkson know what it was for, and what did he make of it?
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Clarkson would have known the question was coming. He said later he had intended to wriggle out of it, and that was apparent, and he almost succeeded. "I am not able to comment on disgraceful umpiring," he said, "so I am better off not saying anything." He added that he didn't know what the 50 metres was for, but Hawthorn did not lose the game because of umpiring.
It was textbook press conference give-and-go, except for that one word.
![An expensive utterance: Hawks coach Alastair Clarkson copped a $20,000 fine.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170616014657im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/c/z/p/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwrw2l.png/1497565713245.jpg)
Decades ago, when coaching North Melbourne, John Kennedy was asked about the umpires one day. "Normally I say 'no comment'," he replied. "Today I say [voice deepening for dramatic effect] 'absolutely no comment whatsoever'." No sanction ensued.
Everyone knew what Kennedy meant then. It was the same thing Clarkson meant now. Kennedy implied, Clarkson explicated. He was fined not so much for the sentiment as the articulation of it.
It is as well that we are not all held to account for every impromptu word that comes out wrong, or before it is fully formed, or just as we bite down on it. The rap sheet would be wide and long. I was probably culpable in the same presser.
Of course, carte blanche cannot be the answer, or else everyone would be Sir Alec Ferguson, who in 27 years as manager of Manchester United did not lose a single match that was not the referee's fault. It is a record that will never be beaten.
But prohibition seems too totalitarian, too. The AFL's regulations tie everyone up in red tape, since they insist that anyone under the its auspices "shall not make any public comment about an umpire or a decision made by an umpire". Implicitly, this forbids compliments as well criticism. The more umpires the AFL puts out there, the more it demands that they are not noticed.
Meantime, fans, reporters, commentators and even coaches, off the record, weigh in freely on umpires, and often a great deal more intemperately than Clarkson.
To be ordered to affect to have no thoughts at all institutionalises disingenuousness. But where to draw the line? For example, and only for the sake of example, on the Footy Show in 2004, James Hird lashed out at umpire Scott McLaren. Invited to elaborate, he did. His attack then differed from Clarkson's now in that it was (a) premeditated, and (b) not mitigated by the heat of the moment. It cost him a $20,000 fine.
Thirteen years later, for one word, Clarkson also cops $20,000. That's a hell of a rate of inflation. Clarkson shouldn't have said what he said. But it was the only thing he said.
So a coach's choice either is to say "no comment", which means he has a comment but can't make it, or to comment without commenting, as per Kennedy. Or maybe it is to take their cue from the late Tom Hafey, who – when considering a certain umpire of his time – would screw up his face into a guise of apparent sympathy and say: "I don't blame the bloke. I feel sorry for him. He just doesn't know."