Source : ABC NEWS
Hawthorn’s Conor Nash has been handed a four-game suspension by the AFL tribunal for a hit that left Geelong’s Gryan Miers concussed.
The incident, which saw Miers subbed out of the Easter Monday clash at the MCG, was graded by the AFL’s match review officer as careless conduct, high contact and severe impact, warranting a ban of at least three weeks.
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Nash accepted that finding but at Wednesday night’s hearing, AFL representative Andrew Woods SC argued for a four-game ban while Hawthorn’s legal team made a case for three.
Representing Nash, Myles Tehan said his previously clean record in both the AFL and in previous sporting careers in Ireland, playing Gaelic football and rugby union, should count in Nash’s favour.
Mr Tehan bizarrely evoked Jim Stynes as an example of another Irishman in the AFL with “a famously impeccable record”.
Mr Tehan also pointed to Nash’s immediate apologies and remorse after the incident and in subsequent text messages to Miers.
Nash said Geelong players on the field during and after the game accepted the contact as accidental. Nash claimed he was trying to hit the ball away from the stoppage before his bicep made contact with Miers’s head.
Tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson KC pointed out Nash had his left hand resting on Miers’s back as he began to swipe towards the ball, indicating he could have reasonably foreseen contact to his head.
This was a significant factor in the final judgement, as the tribunal found that Nash “must have been taken to have been aware of the approximate location of Miers” and it was “all but inevitable Nash would make forceful contact with Miers’s head”.
Recent similar cases involving Hawthorn’s Jack Scrimshaw and Fremantle’s Patrick Voss were also referenced, with the AFL arguing the Nash hit was more severe than those two as the victims of those hits received either a delayed concussion or no concussion at all.
Mr Tehan argued the key difference between Nash’s hit and those of Scrimshaw and Voss was that Nash was attempting to play the ball, rather than the man.
The AFL found the severity of the impact was worthy of a greater ban than those two incidents and agreed with the AFL’s suggested punishment of four weeks.
