From the above link

The Ref is in red/white.

The 2 kids on either side of said Ref are 6 yrs old team players.

The 6 yr old on the left pretty much blends in with the rest of the team.

The 6 yr old on the right is bigger than the freaking ref ffs!

The kid on the left is not safe IMO. Those who have organised the game have essentially set that kid up for failure. And harm. It’s not unusual for kids to suffer terrible injuries when playing in local footy games. Some kids have broken their necks and others have even died.

Surely game organisers have a duty of care as well as a responsibility to ensure the health and safety of all players involved? Well ... where is it in this scenario?

The legal implications of such a scenario ....hmmm. I wouldn’t mind hearing from Aussie or Freediver or Gnads or Frank or Gordon.

John Smith wrote on Jul 28^th, 2023 at 8:23am:



And this lot cry that we are snowflakes.

But of course, all they're publicly  baying for is the shaming and ostracising of a young child.

Back in the day, we played in weight divisions not age divisions.

That too had its disadvantages.

Coaches would actively look for older but small guys to have in their teams, the older blokes being more experienced and therefore better players, even though of the same 'size.'

safety is the new screech from an overly anxious and underly resilient society.

it wont work

no matter how safe you try to be, in the blink of an eyelid, you are going to be dead.

ryan holiday puts it well

Most often, our ego runs away from anything that reminds us of the reality that sits at odds with the comfortable narrative we have build for ourselves. Or, we are simply petrified to look at life’s facts as they are. And there is one simple fact that most of us are utterly scared to meditate, reflect on and face head on: We are going to die. Everyone around us is going to die.

Such reminders and exercises take part of Memento Mori—the ancient practice of reflection on mortality that goes back to Socrates, who said that the proper practice of philosophy is “about nothing else but dying and being dead.” In early Buddhist texts, a prominent term is maraṇasati, which translates as ‘remember death.’ Some Sufis have been called the “people of the graves,” because of their practice of frequenting graveyards to ponder on death and one’s mortality.

Throughout history, Memento Mori reminders have come in many forms. Some, like the aide behind the general, were there to humble. Others were invented to inspire zest for life. The essayist Michel de Montaigne, for instance, was fond of an ancient Egyptian custom where during times of festivities, a skeleton would be brought out with people cheering “Drink and be merry for when you’re dead you will look like this.”

To us moderns this sounds like an awful idea. Who wants to think about death? But what if instead of being scared and unwilling to embrace this truth we did the opposite? What if reflecting and meditating on that fact was a simple key to living life to the fullest? Or that it was the key to our freedom—as Montaigne put it, “To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.”

In his Meditations—essentially his own private journal—Marcus Aurelius wrote that “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” That was a personal reminder to continue living a life of virtue NOW, and not wait. The French painter Philippe de Champaigne expressed a similar sentiment in his painting Still Life with a Skull, which showed the three essentials of existence — the tulip (life), the skull (death), and the hourglass (time). The original painting is part of a genre referred to as Vanitas, a form of 17th century artwork featuring symbols of mortality which encourage reflection on the meaning and fleetingness of life.

Meditating on your mortality is only depressing if you miss the point. It is in fact a tool to create priority and meaning. It’s a tool that generations have used to create real perspective and urgency. To treat our time as a gift and not waste it on the trivial and vain. Death doesn’t make life pointless but rather purposeful. And fortunately, we don’t have to nearly die to tap into this. A simple reminder can bring us closer to living the life we want. It doesn’t matter who you are or how many things you have left to be done, a car can hit you in an intersection and drive your teeth back into your skull. That’s it. It could all be over. Today, tomorrow, someday soon.

The Stoic finds this thought invigorating and humbling. It is not surprising that one of Seneca’s biographies is titled Dying Every Day. After all, it is Seneca who urged us to tell ourselves “You may not wake up tomorrow,” when going to bed and “You may not sleep again,” when waking up as reminders of our mortality. Or as another Stoic, Epictetus, urged his students: “Keep death and exile before your eyes each day, along with everything that seems terrible— by doing so, you’ll never have a base thought nor will you have excessive desire.” Use those reminders and meditate on them daily—let them be the building blocks of living your life to the fullest and not wasting a second.