Everything that truly matters - and what doesn't - ahead of the biggest AFL Tribunal case in years
It’s the biggest tribunal case since Toby Greene walked into an umpire.
That was ferociously emotive and took more than five weeks to resolve.
This case even more so now that the club angst and the family fury has boiled to the surface. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a backdrop like it.
What is absolutely clear is this case belongs before the Tribunal to be fully heard and satisfactorily tested.
What a mess this would have been if it had been waved through in a back office at the AFL. Laura Kane’s first major decision has proven searingly accurate.
Brayden Maynard’s finals fate will be decided inside the next 56 hours.
Angus Brayshaw’s will be determined by consultation with a neurosurgeon and the associated testing over the coming days.
It’s the next major test case in the increasing necessity to confront head trauma.
If you don’t recognise that as the starting point you’re no chance of understanding what’s about to transpire.
Contact sport is changing the world over.
This has been the constant refrain in the findings of Tribunal chairman Jeff Gleeson throughout this season.
“As we have repeatedly said Players must do all they can to minimise the risk of head injuries to other players,” he said.
On this Gleeson couldn’t have been clearer and more consistent.
His eternal questions: “Was this head injury avoidable”.
But that doesn’t mean every head injury results in suspension.
Gleeson and his panel of former players have on numerous occasions found players not guilty when the impact of their actions have caused concussions.
Each case and its unique circumstances have been assessed just as any judicial system must.
This is the source of comfort not confusion.
To read back through Gleeson’s decisions this year is to search for the circumstances in which players have been cleared.
In the Tom Lynch case:
All flight can be misjudged and leaps mistimed. It is not careless for a player to do no more than brace for contact in those circumstances.
In the Dane Rampe case:
We find there was accidental contact between the two players which could not have been reasonably avoided. The split second moment of care that cleared Rory Laird.
And in Tom McCartin’s successful hearing:
There was little else he could reasonably do than himself change direction, decelerate and ride the inevitable impact, which he did.
In unsuccessful cases Lachie Hunter was told rather than bracing or bumping:
He could have remained front on and adopted an arms out position.
And Jacob Van Rooyen was told:
A reasonable player would have foreseen that in spoiling the way he did, it would have almost inevitably resulted in a forceful blow to Ballard’s head.
That was overturned on appeal.
So what will be relevant tonight?
Were Maynard’s actions reasonable in the circumstances?
Was his decision to jump forward to smother that of a prudent player?
Once Maynard leaves the ground is the collision inevitable? What duty of care does Maynard owe Brayshaw from there?
Would a reasonable player have foreseen that entering the contest the way he did would almost inevitably have resulted in a forceful blow to the head?
Did Maynard breach his duty of care when he turned his shoulder into Brayshaw? What alternatives were there in that moment?
Does Maynard have the right to protect himself at the expense of Brayshaw when it is Maynard who has initiated the contact?
Or was the contact outside of Maynard’s control and couldn’t be reasonably foreseen?
It is all governed by the premise: Could this head injury have been reasonably avoided?
There is no question of intent or recklessness and no presence of malice… the threshold is careless.
The notion of the football action is being used as a catch-all excuse. It’s not.
A tackle is a football action until it becomes dangerous. A bump is a football action until it goes high. A smother is a football action until… it becomes something else.
Largely ignored was the fact Maynard’s actions were judged by the umpire closest to the scene to be illegal in the moment they transpired.
He was penalised for prohibited contact and reported for rough conduct.
The manner in which Maynard contested the ball was ruled instantly by the umpire to be outside the rules.
But do the laws as they stand support it becoming a suspension?
That verdict will be most keenly felt by Maynard and Brayshaw, but it will ripple through the future of the game.