Melbourne's Jack Viney has been cleared to play this weekend after the AFL appeals board overturned the two-match suspension he was handed by the tribunal.
A happy Jack Viney leaves the appeal hearing at AFL House. Picture: Colleen Petch. Source: News Corp Australia
THIS was a cock-up on the grandest of scales, and you can quote the AFL on that.
At the end of a dramatic week full of legalese and confronting questions about the fabric of the game, football breathed a sigh of relief.
Jack Viney's suspension was overturned, even if the decision by appeals board boss Peter O'Callaghan to "uphold" the appeal momentarily flummoxed the player himself.
JACK VINEY FREE TO PLAY
"Yeah, there were lawyers in there talking lawyer-talk and I had no idea what was going on," a relieved Viney said. "(My lawyer) David Grace said, 'Well done, you won', and I was like, 'Sweet'."
Sweet indeed, and yet for so long on Thursday night it seemed Viney would be bumped from a game about to descend into crisis. If this appeal was knocked out of the park, every player would second-guess every collision, bump, bracing moment and intersection they arrive at, starting with Friday night's Hawthorn-Sydney contest.
AFL appeals board chairman Peter O'Callaghan leaves AFL House after the Jack Viney hearing. Picture: Colleen Petch. Source: News Corp Australia
Yet as prosecutor Jeff Gleeson outlined what a difficult threshold it was to overturn a tribunal decision after just a solitary successful appeal, the futility of the Viney's resistance seemed certain.
Gleeson spoke of the experienced trio of former players on the jury and that "what the regulations say is that they have to cock it up massively for the board to overturn the appeal".
and that Wayne Schimmelbusch, Emmett Dunne and Wayne Henwood did, because it took just 14 minutes to uphold the AFL's case appeal, even if the official reasons won't be presented for days.
So we will attempt to fill in the gaps for the appeals board. The only decision they can reasonably have made is that the trio of former players made a dramatic error of judgment.
That instead of accepting the totally legitimate premise that Viney was involved in a collision but not guilty of a bump, they suffered a collective brain explosion.
Did the Appeals Board get the Jack Viney decision right?
Where are we at now after a turbulent and confusing week full of raw emotions and anger from fans, coaches and players alike? We seem to be back to commonsense, as Melbourne football manager Josh Mahoney said after the appeal.
If you actively bump a player and he is hurt, you face the dramatic consequences. But this is football, a chaotic, wonderful 360-degree game where accidents can and do happen. And thankfully there is still room for accidents of the type that saw Viney doing everything in his power to minimise injury bar leaping out of the way of the contest.
"People just putting themselves in contested situations is not something you want to see go out of the game. We will just go back to normal now," Mahoney said.
Now we need one final piece of resolution: clarity on Friday from the AFL on the bump, especially given Andrew Demetriou's stated position that the bump rule has "perhaps gone too far". If it takes the AFL releasing 30 illegal and 30 legal incidents on its own website to provide that guidance, then so be it.
As Dogs coach and Saturday night opponent Brendan McCartney said on Thursday night, this was a "good result for the game".
Can players brace for contact, or "stop and prop" (as Grace said)?
For those still confused, Melbourne should release the six camera angles shown by Grace on Thursday night before Gleeson attempted to strip his argument to the bone. He showed that rather than bumping, Viney actually stopped in his tracks when it was inevitable Lynch would win the ball.
"At no stage does Viney move forward towards Lynch and (Alex) Georgiou. They cannon into him. He has hardly moved," Grace said.
Let us hope the appeals board ignored the legal framework and burden of proof to overturn an appeal and just relied on gut instinct. That they could see one bad tribunal decision could undermine everything we love about the game, and they had a chance to fix it — because fix it they did.
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