The Baseline: Scratching Grant on one bad tackle makes Dally M Awards a farce

Harry Grant has been ruled ineligible to win the Dally M medal this season after landing a two-game suspension for a shoulder charge on Bulldogs forward Harry Hayes in their Round 25 clash.

Now, no one’s saying he shouldn’t be banned for a few weeks – but for that two-week sidelining to cost the Melbourne captain a shot at the game’s biggest individual honour is just plain wrong.

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The NRL rules are clear right now: Any suspension that extends up to or beyond two matches makes a player ineligible for any Dally M medal. A one-game suspension sees them stripped of three points, but leaves them still eligible for the honour.

While many have James Tedesco tipped for the top gong, Grant was basically a shoo-in for hooker of the year.

That will no longer go to him after this ban, leaving whoever is up next to be (falsely) crowned the “year’s best” number nine. This Sporting Base writer suspects Cronulla rake Blakye Brailey will be next in line.

While Brailey’s been good, to get the top-spot ticket over Grant isn’t right.

Should the Dally Ms be themed more around “Best and Fairest,” then this would make just a little more sense. But, they’re not: The medal (and its positional offshoots) is awarded to “the player voted for as the ‘player of the year’ over the NRL regular season.”

And who’s to say Grant couldn’t have caught “Teddy” by the end of the season for the biggest award there is, too? (I’m just putting this in as a hypothetical, considering Grant wasn’t even in the top 10 when medal voting went behind closed doors and Tedesco has lifted since that time pre-Origin, but it’s worth thinking about here anyway.)

Let’s take a look at the situation. Grant makes this tackle, cops the two-week ban, then comes back for finals. That denies him two full weeks to earn points, giving Brailey or whoever could be nipping at his heels plenty of time to turn on a performance. Then, if Grant still leads with those weeks missing on his resume, he still gets the award as clear best.

That surely makes more sense than stripping it entirely, all for one (albeit bad) tackle.

It echoes the situation we saw over in the AFL last year, where Isaac Heeney was clearly the year’s best.

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But, thanks to their similarly stupid Brownlow rulings, Heeney was denied the chance to win the top medal, and when he returned from his suspension – itself a bit of a sham, I’d say – he fell a level. While some might argue that would have happened anyway, I would argue that Heeney’s drive being sapped even a bit cost us the finale to an all-time great individual year.

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I’m not suggesting players solely play for these top awards, but it certainly plays a role. Premiership rings are one thing, but only one player gets to be crowned the Dally M medalist for any given year. Heck, plenty of top stars never even get one.

Legends of the game clearly agree too, with Gordon Tallis one to come out swinging after the suspension news broke. “If you don’t play those two weeks, you can’t get points for those two weeks,” Tallis wisely suggested on Monday. “There’s your punishment… if you’re still good enough to win it and only play 18 or 20 rounds, that means you’ve had a great year.”

So too journalist Ben Dobbin: “We can all agree Grant has been the best hooker,” Dobbin said. “So when you’re giving out that award, whoever wins will be going ‘Well, I only won it because Grant got suspended’. And I don’t agree with that.”

Well said, Dobbs. Until something changes, it makes the Dally Ms a bit of a rugby league farce.

(Conversely, with all said and done, let’s still rub out players if they get caught making TikToks during COVID-19.)