So I watch the Tour de France, and Team Sky are dominating. Wout Poels, the main workhorse for Chris Froome gets a flat. He stops and gets a new front wheel from the team car, and then blatantly drafts the team car back up to the peloton. That is illegal. The race organisers might slap him with a time penalty, but they won't disqualify him. So he has no problem. His time is immaterial - he's only there to help Froome.
A couple of years ago, Froome needed food in the last 20km of a mountain stage. Its illegal to get food or drink from the team car in the last 20km, but his team mate at the time, Richie Porte, rode back to the team car and got him some food. Froome recovered to finish well. The race organisers pinged him 20 seconds. But if he hadn't broken the rules, he was stuffed and might have lost 2 minutes.
And this is what teams like Hawthorn do too. Sam Mitchell kneeing Fyfe. Hodge's sling tackles against Sydney. They break the rules, but magically the penalties for doing so are never very much. If I recall correctly, Lake only got 4 weeks for deliberately choking a player until he passed out. And the thing is, if you have Hawthorn's depth, it doesn't matter if you get suspended, as there is Matt Spanger waiting to replace you.
So how do we get to be like Team Sky and Hawthorn? Because I wouldn't mind being the bully boys of the competition, just for a change.
