AFL 360 hosts Gerard Whateley and Jordan Lewis have backed the Tribunal’s decision to reduce the expected suspension for St Kilda’s Anthony Caminiti on Tuesday night.
Caminiti’s strike on Collingwood’s Nathan Murphy was given the highest gradings possible by the Match Review – severe impact, high contact and intentional – with a suggested ban of four-plus weeks.
But the Tribunal panel downgraded the incident to careless, agreeing that Caminiti didn’t intend to concuss Murphy, after the young forward argued he was trying to push his opponent for positioning purposes.
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While some on social media were confused, pointing to Nathan Broad’s four-match ban for a dangerous tackle earlier in the season and asking why a football act was worth a longer penalty.
However long-time AFL journalist Whateley called it “a series of unfortunate events”.
“I’m supportive of this,” he said on Fox Footy.
“There’s the catch-all which does serve the game well, which is that the forearm or elbow off the play or during a break of play should be regarded as intentional. Except that you can look at this and go, this was actually careless.
“It’s really unfortunate, and three weeks is a substantial penalty. It was graded by the harshest possible categories, which I totally understand, I do think that discretion the Tribunal has was well-used here.
“This was a careless act with a terrible outcome that is worthy of three weeks rather than the extreme of five, which should be kept for the worst possible actions. I don’t think that was this.”
Hawthorn champion Jordan Lewis responded: “I couldn’t agree more Gerard. There’s a few things that were unfortunate in that instance but the reality is that Murphy has gone off with concussion, so there has to be a severe penalty.”
Whateley added: “It has to be grave and I think three does that.”
Lewis continued: “And I think the argument of careless, you can only watch that and you can see the intent that Caminiti had.
“He was going to push off, he was struck by Murphy, Murphy’s lucky Caminiti didn’t drop because he was up around that area as well. So for me that was a common sense decision.
“Let’s hope Nathan Murphy was OK but Caminiti was a little bit unlucky in Murphy dropping his knees and three weeks is still a hefty penalty for something he didn’t show intent to do.”
