Shane is right. Our club does have culpability in this. At a level that they may never really understand.
The club’s statement was tardy, depersonalised and poor. The lack of club acknowledgement at the game was disappointing but there may be bigger reasons.
Ross alluded to the fact there are a lot of cultural sensitivities at play in how the club was dealing with this in his presser, and it was-after all-a mere 24 hours after his death.
It was clear in his presser that Ross was devastated and gutted. Ross’s response was much more personal than Alcock’s. He knew him.
After our games, Ross and the coaching staff usually walk down from the box and straight down into the rooms, while the boys stay on the ground and do their thing. Last night Ross waited alone until SonSon had done media and given out the hats; waited for him to come back round the boundary to join the rest of the team, and the two shared a private moment and a long hug before Ross left the ground.
That, SonSon’s first and Mundy’s hug of Sonny before the banner, and other small acts between players throughout the game: those are more personal a tribute to Yarran than a corporate manufactured display of grief would be, anyway. There was an intimacy of raw grief last night we had the saddest of privileges to share.
How the club respond this week, when the adrenaline of initial shock wears off for the players, reality sets in, our players attend their friend’s funeral... This is when we will see the degree of how our club’s ignorance of its culpability in Shane’s last few years is writ large, I suspect. I hope I’m wrong.
