Gerard Whateley and Nathan Buckley cannot quite work out why Zaine Cordy is fronting the Tribunal on Tuesday night.
The Western Bulldogs defender was referred straight to the Tribunal for an off-the-ball bump on Tanner Bruhn which left the young Giant concussed.
Cordy’s bump was body to body and the contact forced Bruhn to hit the ground which is presumably how the concussion occurred.
Whateley was strong with his thoughts, wondering how the incident has been graded and stating he was “miffed” by the overall decision.
“Zaine Cordy is booked to front the Tribunal tonight for the incident that left Tanner Bruhn with concussion,” he said on SEN’s Whateley.
“It was sent ungraded, which I’m completely miffed by. As I understand it now, the charge tonight will be rough conduct and it will be steeped in being unreasonable in the circumstances.
“It will have to have a grading, otherwise you can’t prosecute a case. I think the grading will be careless, it will obviously be high impact because of the concussion, but it will be to the body.
“The charge on the bump is going to be body contact. Everything about this strikes me as weird.
“In our football sense, this is unconstitutional. You’ve reversed the burden of proof on a player, notwithstanding that by the time they get there tonight there’s going to be a charge applied to it.”
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Nathan Buckley questioned how the Cordy case immediately found its way to the Tribunal having briefly been in front of MRO Michael Christian.
Buckley asked: “So we’re now just removing the illusion of an independent body between the AFL and Tribunal decisions?”
Whateley replied: “The AFL has the right to send a case to the Tribunal.”
“The only way to read this is Michael Christian said, ‘No, I’m not grading it because it’s not a reportable offence’. The higher powers at the AFL said, ‘No, there’s a concussion here, we need this to be tested by jury with all the evidence heard’.
“The only way it gets there ungraded is through that circumstance.”
According to Buckley, this scenario suggests any type of concussion, regardless of how it comes about, is now the fault of the instigator even if head contact isn’t direct.
The former Collingwood player and coach proposed, tongue firmly planted in cheek, that perhaps the sport is better served without contact if these football incidents are going to be looked at so closely.
“The way I would glean it now is reportable offences are anything that cause harm to the opposition, especially to the head or through concussion,” he added.
“You can actually be concussed without making contact to the head. Bruhn’s head hits the ground afterwards and that may be when the concussion actually occurred.
“So, that it could also have happened simply through body to body contact and a whiplash action without any contact with the head to anything else in particular.
“We’re starting to go into really question-mark areas when we’re judging on outcome and not on intent.
“Let’s just put flags in our shorts and make it a non-contact game and just be done with it.”
Dwayne Russell also passed comment on the Cordy situation.
He believes this could be one of the biggest test cases we have seen in the game.
“It’s arguably the biggest test case we’ve ever had if he gets found guilty and suspended,” he said on SEN’s Dwayne’s World.
“If he’s not guilty, it’s business as usual and we are where we thought we were. That is, a block within three metres of the ball that doesn’t hit an opponent’s head that isn’t unreasonable in the circumstance is allowed. I don’t think this was unreasonable in the circumstance, I thought it was reasonable.
“But if he does get suspended tonight, where are we at with accidental injuries to players in the normal course of a physical contact game that is reasonable normal force?
“Are you now going to be responsible for any concussion that occurs accidentally as a result of your initial bump?
“Guess where we’re at? We’re at a big state in the game’s evolution.”