- Jun 10, 2014
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- AFL Club
- Collingwood
Sorry for the intrusion. Reckon you are spot on and your club should be rightly pi55ed off. The Tribunal Guidelines state that "the potential to cause injury must be factored into the determination of Impact". Not sure how Pickett didn't make it to severe on that basis, even if Smith just bounced up. AFL should've appealed that themselves.It would be the right outcome if Pickett also got 3. Either Pickett also gets 3, or McAdam also gets 2. If they'd got the same penalty, I seriously doubt we would be appealing right now and everybody would have just copped it and moved on. That's what a numbnut like Whately seems to be missing - the idea that we somehow didn't get the memo on the dangers of head injury etc is a massive straw man. Nobody is disputing the need to protect the head. We're not trying to get McAdam off scot-free for this. We just want consistency with bans handed out to other players for near-identical offences. We're not trying to get the suspension thrown out, just reduced to the same level that other clubs copped.
But don't think it helps you at McAdam's appeal - your only grounds are that "the classification of the offence by the Tribunal was manifestly excessive". That is a much higher requirement than it being simply inconsistent with the classification of a separate charge.
Reckon the AFL needs to look at some bumps getting up into the intentional classification as well. Dog's breakfast.