Rider Broadcast Network analyst Luc Mullinder believes B.C. Lions defensive back Josh Hagerty should have received a far longer suspension for his groin strikes incident and wants the CFL to take notice.
Mullinder joined Barney Shynkaruk on the SportsCage on Friday afternoon, and it was easy to tell from the tone of his voice that the incident did not sit well with him whatsoever.
He suggested the league take a long and hard look at its discipline policies with a goal of making punishments far more severe for what he termed an “intentional assault.”
“I hope that it establishes the fact that an assault and something that's so far outside of the realm of anything athletic, can actually be punished more severely than a reckless tackle,” Mullinder said. “If the CFL wants all these viewers, all these new partnerships, and if we want people to take us seriously, then we can't allow something like this not to be treated as a policy changer. The league's come way too far.”
It was announced Wednesday that Hagerty, a Regina native and former Saskatchewan Huskie, had been suspended for two games for hitting Montreal’s Liam Talbot twice below the belt last Saturday.
That suspension was viewed as extremely light by many given that the 23-year-old Alouettes running back suffered what 3DownNation reported as a “life-altering injury.” Talbot has had surgery and is expected to miss the rest of the season.
“At some point, (Talbot’s) family has to know that there's people in the league that are empathetic to what happened to him and won't let this happen ever again,” Mullinder continued. “This is beyond crazy to me how this even happened.”
Mullinder added this should be a transformational moment for the league when it comes to dealing with such ugly situations.
“There's a massive difference between a reckless football play and a play that has gotten people suspended from two to four games here previously in the CFL, and what Josh Haggerty did,” he said.
Mullinder noted that in his nine years in the league he was never struck in such a way or even heard of it happening, despite taking the field in an era with many hard-nosed opponents around him.
“There's nothing tough about what Josh Haggerty did,” he said. “There's nothing football related, there's nothing athletic-wise and the worst part is, he did it twice. He punched a dude in the testicles once, went to the sideline, had a chance to think about it, had a chance to reflect, and then came out and did it again. There’s no excuse for that.”
Mullinder felt the incidents were disrespectful to every aspect of the CFL game.
“It takes so much talent and so much effort and so much focus and so much sacrifice to get put in a position that Josh Hagerty has,” he said. “There's people that would absolutely kill for Josh Haggerty's position, and he's out there, and he's disrespecting his position like that. He's disrespecting the game like that. We can't have that. Period.”
Mullinder’s solution is for the CFL players union and the league to make changes soon to address particularly egregious incidents.
“Something like this that's completely out of the realm of the sport needs to be treated completely different, and we need to have this conversation right now,” he said. “We can't sit back and point to bureaucracy at the moment. We have to actually stand up and say, this is how we're planning to deal with the situation.”
B.C. is currently on a bye week, so Hagerty will sit out next Friday's game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders and an Oct. 3 contest against the Toronto Argonauts. He’s eligible to return when B.C. hosts the Ottawa Redblacks on Oct. 9.
