David King has been left dumbfounded by the Match Review Officer’s decision to grade Tom Stewart’s bump on Dion Prestia as ‘careless’.
Stewart’s bump left Prestia concussed and struggling to get to his feet in confronting scenes for footy fans on Saturday, with the grading handed down a little over 24 hours later on Sunday.
MRO Michael Christian judged the incident to be careless conduct, severe impact and high contact. The severe impact part of the ruling sees Stewart referred directly to the Tribunal, with his ban to start at four weeks.
It was the careless aspect King disagreed with, saying the three-time All-Australian made the choice to run past the football.
“We’re doing it again, how many times do we have to have this chat … if that’s not intentional, I don’t know what is,” the North Melbourne champion told SEN’s Whateley.
“I don’t understand careless. If you go past the ball, shape to bump and execute the perfect bump in terms of the actual bump, what you’ve designed to do, (was) excellence.
“These guys, they’ve got such dexterity, they can do anything.
“It’s amazing how as soon as they make an error, they’re the clumsiest people in the world, but outside of that moment, they’re the most gifted, elite performing athletes we’ve got, so that doesn’t wash with me.
“Now, I think he’s made a mistake, but the actual act is performed with excellence. He did what he designed to do, in that exact moment.”
Post-game, Stewart’s coach Chris Scott said, “of course (the bump) wasn’t (deliberate)” while speaking about Stewart’s exceptional character.
The 2021 Geelong best and fairest winner was captured on the broadcast looking distraught at quarter-time.
However, King said those aspects need to be separated from the action of the bump.
“So he made a poor decision, but the act is what I want to talk about. Not that he’s a good guy, not that he’s made phone calls since, not that he’s shown remorse at quarter time, all of that’s fine, but the act is what we’ve got to take out,” he continued.
“Not who’s done it, the act. This has been graded as careless when it should be intentional, what happened to Dion Prestia should not happen in our game.
“He was a mess, and not one person alive can tell me what the long-lasting effect to Dion Prestia is.
“But I guarantee you that the three minutes we had to sit there and watch him be held up is just awful for our code.
“So I’m not taking the Tom Stewart side of it, I’m taking the action out. The action itself, in my opinion, is all I want to talk about it.”
Prestia was eventually officially subbed off late in the first quarter, with ruckman Ivan Soldo taking his place on the field.
The bump left Richmond without one of their most important players in the three-point loss, while Stewart was free to roam the field and be in the top handful of players.
It’s created a debate about whether the game should have a ‘red card’ or similar system to penalise offenders during the game, Kane Cornes a proponent of the idea..
But King is against the idea.
“I just think it’s impossible to legislate, it’s impossible to get right, and you get it wrong once and it’s too big a penalty to have got wrong,” he stated.
“The system should work as it sits now, but the penalties, for mine, have got to be heavier.”
The Tribunal is likely to sit on Tuesday night to decide Stewart’s fate.