Nature of play sounds like a pretty harmless phrase. But for all those involved in the inquest into the death of Phillip Hughes it has taken on a sinister quality none will ever forget.It was these words that caused the New South Wales coronial inquest to veer into truly awful territory at Sydneys Downing Centre court complex this week, pitting cricketers against one another and causing the Hughes family to bitterly decry the conclusion of a process that had started out with faint traces of optimism.Before the inquest began on Monday, the familys representative, James Henderson, stated that they hoped perhaps there will be a positive that comes out of Phillips death. That may be, but this week has not felt like it.When the inquest began with an opening statement by the New South Wales coroner, Michael Barnes QC, he stated that proceedings were not about apportioning blame. That may have been the intention, but this week has not felt like it.Mainly because of those three words, nature of play. Cricket Australias own investigation of Hughes death, conducted by David Curtain QC, had carefully outlined terms of reference that did not include issues surrounding the laws of the game nor how it was played on the day Hughes was hit. It had been generally understood that this was the most tragic of accidents, in a game where the hardness of the cricket ball will always necessitate some risk.Sean Abbott, the unfortunate man to bowl the ball that struck Hughes, had concluded exactly that in his statement to the inquest: I know there is a suggestion that the laws of the game be changed so that bouncers should not be bowled, but the same cricket ball will be hit and flying around whether bouncers are bowled or not. There will always be risks in the game.Yet the inclusion of reference to the nature of play in the brief outlined by the coroner opened up what has been repeatedly called a Pandoras Box. Inquests, of course, are devised to determine what remedies may be applied to prevent similar deaths in future, and the coroner is obliged to investigate thoroughly and fully. This most high-profile of inquests was set on the path it took this week from the moment the family questioned how the game had been played, creating - in the words of Greg Hughes - an unsafe workplace for his son.The Hughes familys concerns about the number of bouncers their son faced that day were linked to their apparent disgust at some of the sledging allegedly directed at him, namely the threat of Ill kill you supposedly uttered by Doug Bollinger. All tumbled out at the inquest.What followed was one of the most vexing episodes witnessed in Australian cricket. Convened ostensibly to try to establish how to make the game and its players safer, the inquest instead turned into the most painful and hurtful dredging through the past imaginable. Very little was witnessed in terms of discernible benefits or remedies beyond those already recommended at the start of the week by Kristina Stern SC, counsel assisting the coroner.Instead, players and officials were subjected to cross-examination that at times stretched the bounds of credulity. Crude links were drawn between cricket tactics, verbal exchanges and the freak blow to the side of the neck, from a short ball in a Sheffield Shield game at the SCG on November 25, 2014, that resulted in the arterial injury leading to Hughes death two days later in St Vincents Hospital.So it was that Brad Haddin, captain of New South Wales on the day, had the ethics of his tactics questioned. So it was that Bollinger, exemplar of the angry fast bowler, was asked to justify why he bowled and spoke the way he has always done. So it was that David Warner, who sat at Hughes side as medical staff tried frantically to get him breathing, was questioned on sledging. And so it was that Tom Cooper, Hughes batting partner that day, housemate, and close friend, was made to feel in some way responsible for not stepping in to prevent the events that unfolded.For Cooper, it was a particularly cruel experience. At the SCG wake that followed Hughes death he had spoken to Jason, Hughes brother, at a time when all may have been a blur. A few days later, Cooper was a pallbearer at the funeral, in Macksville. Yet a little less than two years later he was being accused of relaying Bollingers sledges to Jason Hughes, his evidence pitted against the late submission of another pallbearer, the Mosman club captain Matthew Day.All this seemed at best peripheral to events on the day Hughes was hit, and at worst a sickening re-traumatisation of the players involved. There is a compelling argument to be made that none of the players should have been asked to appear at the inquest at all.Haddin, Bollinger, Warner, Cooper and Abbott had already delivered statements based on interviews with Stern and CA counsel. Once the officiating umpires, Mike Graham-Smith and Ash Barrow, plus the long-time international umpire and ICC training manager Simon Taufel, had all stated to the inquest that they did not consider the nature of play to be outside the laws of the game, the players testimony was irrelevant, other than to heighten the visibility and drama of the inquest.Others were drawn into questions that seemed a long way from relevant. The former New South Wales administrator Donna Anderson found herself being asked about instances of sledging in Sheffield Shield matches, despite never having taken the field as either a player or an umpire. The CA head of sports science, Alex Kountouris, was heavily questioned regarding an internal report he had prepared on the incident.At the same time the media covering the inquest found themselves reliving the same problems that arose in the hours and days after Hughes was hit. Issues of appropriate and sensitive coverage of such cases, that lie at the juncture of sport, police rounds and court proceedings, have tested the limits of reporters, editors, cameramen and photographers. Numerous players are known to have checked out of following all media this week, with good reason.There were some recommendations that can be viewed as constructive pending their inclusion in Barnes findings, to be released on November 4. Players and umpires may find themselves being subject to mandatory first-aid training, and clearer communication between participants on the field and medical staff off it may save critical minutes in the moments after any instance of serious injury. And the wording of laws relating to the use of short-pitched bowling is likely to be revisited on Taufels recommendation.Yet none of these findings would have been any different had none of the players been asked to speak at the inquest. Nor would they have changed much at all if matters of sledging and team plans had not been probed with considerable thrust by Greg Melick SC, the Hughes familys legal representative and a former special investigator for CA. Melick represented his clients with zest, left with little choice but to pursue the lines opened by the coroners brief.The overwhelming sense around the Hughes inquest this week is that it has been an enormous amount of pain and conflict for very little additional benefit. At its centre has been a grieving family, their suffering no less vivid than it was in the days following the ball that fatefully struck Phillip Hughes on the side of the neck. All that was brought horribly home by the sight of Greg, Virginia and Megan Hughes making abrupt exits on the final day of the inquest, in the midst of a closing submission by CAs legal counsel, Bruce Hodgkinson.There had been talk, whispered in quiet corners, of a gulf between the Hughes family and the cricket community. 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Jim Rutherford, President and General Manager of the Carolina Hurricanes, announced Wednesday that the team would assign Swedish forward Elias Lindholm to his nations team for the upcoming tournament. COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Five seasons have gone by in a blink, until you stop and think about how far Texas A&M has come in the Kevin Sumlin era.That is hard to do, stopping and thinking, given the ongoing telenovela that has been Aggies football: big wins, bigger losses, revolving-door coordinators, revolving-door rosters, lewd assistants and, of course, Johnny Football. Behind the scenes of the drama, however, the Aggies program underwent a complete makeover.While this is the third time that Texas A&M (6-0) has reached No. 6 under Sumlin, the Aggies team that goes to Tuscaloosa on Saturday to play No. 1 Alabama (7-0) is a more muscular animal, financially and literally, than ever before.That may not be enough to knock off a Crimson Tide program that has people searching history, not to mention Rogets Thesaurus, for the appropriate descriptors. But it is an indication that the program is on firmer footing than when Sumlin arrived.Youve got, really, a couple of ways you can do it, Sumlin said in his office Monday. You can go about it and say, Heres what we believe in, and Im going to start here and work through philosophically the way you want to do things.He cited Bret Bielema as an example of that method. Bielema brought a physical style from Wisconsin to Arkansas in 2013, and the Razorbacks lost the first 13 Southeastern Conference games they played trying to adapt to his demands. Since then, they are 8-6 in the league and 16-8 overall.Over time, he was able to do that, Sumlin said. I wasnt sure I had that amount of time.Sumlin knew what had happened to the Aggies in the 10 years before he arrived. A&M fired R.C. Slocum, who pretty much went straight from College Station into the College Football Hall of Fame, not to mention Dennis Franchione, who had taken teams to first place in four different conferences, and Mike Sherman, the former head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers.Those three men won a combined 422 games in college and pro football, and their careers screeched to a halt at Kyle Field.The Aggies team that Sumlin took over had speed. It didnt have size. Time, again, to stop and think. The up-tempo spread offense that is the norm these days didnt exist in the SEC that Texas A&M joined. As unique a talent as Johnny Manziel proved to be in 2012 and 2013, no one in the SEC knew how to deal with the scheme that showcased him, either.For most linebackers who timed the snap perfectly and crashed through a gap to confront a quarterback, thats where a play ended. With Manziel, thats where it began. Manziel thrived because he could buy himself time. But his greatest legacy may be that he bought the entire program time.You have to have a chance to win, Sumlin said, so to do that, we were different and utilized our skill set. Of course, Johnny was not only maybe the best player in the country, he was certainly the most exciting player in the country, which gave us the opportunity to increase the roster.Manziels success -- he won the 2012 Heisman and propelled the Aggies to a final AP ranking that year of No. 6 -- gave Texas A&M the entrée to compete for top recruits such as defensive end Myles Garrett, now a junior. Manziel also bought time for the administration to come to grips with the financial commitment and mental will it would take to engage in the SEC arms race.Winning had a lot to do with that -- resource commitment, Sumlin said.dddddddddddd. But they also saw what this league had.Since Sumlin arrived, Texas A&M has spent $450 million on an expansion and makeover of Kyle Field, turning an erector set into a showplace; the program also has built a $12 million player performance center (nee weight room) and a $12 million nutrition center (nee training table).Texas A&M also understood that it had to ramp up its coaches salaries. In Sumlins mind, the doubling of his salary, to $5 million this season, is less relevant than the increase in the salary pool for assistants. According to USA Todays annual survey of coaches salaries, that pool increased from $2.68 million in 2012 to $4.4 million in 2015.The toughness of the Aggies defense reflects the coaching of coordinator John Chavis, whom Sumlin lured away from LSU two years ago with a salary of $1.6 million per season. Last winter, Sumlin hired Noel Mazzone from UCLA to be his offensive coordinator for a guaranteed three-year deal that at completion will have paid Mazzone a total of $2.56 million.They are coaching a more talented roster than Sumlin found when he arrived. When he signed recruits such as Garrett and strong safety Armani Watts in 2014, they were good enough to start that fall. Part of the reason is that the Aggies lost three juniors in the first round of the 2013 and 14 drafts: offensive tackle Luke Joeckel, Manziel and wide receiver Mike Evans.As much talent as Garrett and Watts brought to College Station, theres a reason the Aggies went 3-5 in the SEC in 2014. Boys played men. Watts started the season with an interception in the opener against South Carolina, but when we got to around Game 6 or 7, and Armani just got overwhelmed, Sumlin said. Had to take him off the field. ... But now hes a junior.He understands that his body has changed. His mental preparation during the week and his physical preparation during the week are different. And that comes with education and experience.That brings up the last change that Sumlin engineered. Over the last 10 months, strength coach Larry Jackson revamped the way the Aggies work out to expedite a transition from a speed-based team to one more balanced between speed and strength.Sumlin had seen the Aggies wear down too many times in the fourth quarter. Some of that had to do with playing teenagers. Some of it had to do with the emphasis on speed, and some with the realization that the SEC had learned how to defend the up-tempo spread.We changed our philosophy about who we are, Sumlin said. We looked at the end zone tape. The mass just looked different. Meaning the Aggies were not as big from hip to hip as their SEC opponents.This season, Texas A&M made a goal-line stand in the final seconds to stop Arkansas. The Aggies beat Tennessee in double overtime. They are not wearing down. Texas A&M under Sumlin has engineered a complete makeover and gone 42-16 (.724) while doing it.The next test will be getting to the fourth quarter against Alabama. This is not the Aggies team that, with Manziel, upset No. 1 Alabama 29-24 in Tuscaloosa in 2012. More important, its not the Aggies team that Alabama humiliated 59-0 at Bryant-Denny in 2014. By every measure, Sumlins team is bigger and stronger. Wholesale Hoodies NFL Shirts Outlet Jerseys NFL Wholesale Cheap NFL Jerseys Free Shipping Wholesale Jerseys Cheap Cheap NFL Jerseys China Wholesale Jerseys Wholesale NFL Jerseys Cheap NFL Jerseys China Cheap NFL Jerseys ' ' '