Brisbane will head to the AFL appeals board in a desperate bid to free suspended star Lachie Neale for the grand final.
Neale remains banned for the premiership decider against Fremantle after failing to argue his way out of a one-match suspension for a gut punch on Hawthorn’s Jack Ginnivan.
The Lions confirmed their appeal on Wednesday.
To succeed at an appeals board hearing, expected on Thursday, Brisbane will have to prove the tribunal finding was either an error of law, an unreasonable decision, a manifestly excessive classification, or a manifestly excessive sanction.
“There’s been 10 [gut punch] incidents this year, all of them have resulted in a week [suspension],” the AFL’s footy boss Greg Swann said on Wednesday. “That was the third [tribunal] appeal and they’ve all been upheld.”
At the end of a four-and-a-half hour hearing on Tuesday night, the tribunal decided not to enact the “exceptional and compelling clause” to allow Neale to avoid suspension.
Why? For many reasons, according to tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson KC. There was Neale’s evidence, which Gleeson rejected as “inconsistent”.
Neale insisted he didn’t strike Ginnivan during last Saturday night’s preliminary final.
“It was more a bump or body-check,” the dual Brownlow medallist said, adding Ginnivan “might have taken a bit of a dive to get a free kick”.
The tribunal didn’t buy it.
“We have listened carefully to Mr Neale’s evidence but we find it was inconsistent in key respects with what we saw on the video,” Gleeson said. “And to that extent we do not accept it.”
Neale maintained his shoulder and chest made contact with Ginnivan; the tribunal found it was “a forceful blow delivered with a swinging arm and an open hand”.
That’s the guilty part. Next was what Gleeson described as “the more difficult issue”.
Was using the exceptional and compelling circumstances clause justified to downgrade Neale’s penalty from a ban to a fine?
Introduced this year, the clause had been deployed once: to downgrade a one-game ban to Collingwood legend and the AFL’s games record holder Scott Pendlebury, to a fine.
But Gleeson noted Pendlebury was charged with rough conduct. Specifically, graded as careless conduct, medium impact, and high contact.
Neale was charged with striking graded as intentional conduct, medium impact and body contact.
Then, there was Neale’s record, which his barrister – the AFL’s former football operations boss, Adrian Anderson – compared to Pendlebury.
Until March, the Pies great had never fronted the tribunal or been suspended in his 21-year career.
Until Tuesday night, Neale had never been banned in a 15-year career including two Brownlow medals, six club champion awards, and captaining the Lions to two premierships.
But as the AFL’s counsel Andrew Woods KC pointed out, Neale had previously been found guilty of offences eight times – three of them, for striking the body of opponents – though he’d never been suspended.
The tribunal chair said the purpose of the AFL’s gut-punch law, also introduced this year, was “to stamp out this very sort of conduct”.
“Neale ignored it and he knew the consequences,” Gleeson said. “Being of Neale’s outstanding record does not render a one-match suspension for that act inappropriate or unreasonable.”
