AFL Victoria’s Match Review Panel charged player Long for striking Footscray player Timothy English during the third quarter of the VFL Round 18 match, Essendon vs Footscray on Saturday 19th August, 2017 at Windy Hill.
Based on the available video and medical report, the incident was assessed as careless conduct with high impact and high contact. The incident was classified as a three match base sanction. In summary, due to a previous poor record, his three match sanction is increased by one further game to four matches and he can accept a three match sanction with an early guilty plea.
Looks like the medical report got outsourced to Fark Carlton. Mind you, it wasn’t “careless”, they just said that because otherwise the system gives him an entirely disproportionate 6 or so weeks.
It was a spontaneous but deliberate reaction to the ump ignoring the illegal contact on his teammate, one metre out from our goals.
Who cares? He’s awesome. Looked like he was let off the chain in the second half to make up for the missing Begley. He really started to get going; I think we’ll see some good performances in the finals.
I may have been looking favourably for Langford in that replay…but…he DID get on a particularly hot streak in that third quarter. Looked a class above.
Loved seeing him attempt a long handball at one stage into the F50. There aren’t that many AFL players who have a long handball in their armament IMO.
And one last thing, while Langford is now playing in the most congested part of the ground, when he does get a little bit of space and time to kick, he really is creative and precise and damaging with the kick.
The Langford had a blinder. Best game I have seen him play live. The pirhouette blind turn thing he’s doing is making good use of his core strength and easily defeating his VFL opponents. I hope it translates to AFL games. He looked to have a lot of confidence in that game and I reckon the coaches got it right developing him in the VFL.
Another one I kept an eye on is Lukas Webb, number 19 for the Doggies.
He really does look very good as a clearing inside mid. Quite smart. A bit more acceleration than say Langford…For an example, look at the way he hits the fall of the ball to create a Doggies goal on the 75min mark of the replay.
I probably would be willing, at a stretch, to give up our second pick for a player who now looks ready to commence senior football. Maybe a late pick back the other way.
PS. Now I’m about to get really fanciful…there has been the tiniest suggestion that Woosha could attract Lever to our club. If we got Lever and Webb, we would be amassing quite a few players from the 2014 draft. See what the order was here: https://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/ft_drafts?year=2014&t=N
EDIT: Dogs picked up Toby McLean with basically the same pick as Webb, and Caleb Daniel and Bailey Dale after Webb. He is probably feeling left out in the cold, as they all play senior footy. I’ll downgrade my trade offer to a third round pick.