Questions have been raised as to why Collingwood’s Beau McCreery wasn’t suspended for his tackle that saw GWS star Callan Ward injure his AC joint.
Ward will miss up to two months with the injury and Kane Cornes stated on the Sunday Footy Show that he felt it was a “dangerous tackle”.
“Just because his arms are pinned,” Cornes said.
“It’s just the situation that we’re in. If you have a vulnerable opponent and you do have that driving motion, if he hits his head rather than his shoulder … you’ve got to roll him.”
However, AFL GM of Football Operations Laura Kane doesn’t believe the tackle met the criteria to be labelled dangerous.
“I am (comfortable with it not being a dangerous tackle). We worked through that with our MRO,” Kane told SEN WA Mornings.
“We don’t like to see players hurt, we don’t like to see players missing periods of footy as a result of incidents on the field, but we didn’t feel like the tackle met the criteria – just, and wasn’t graded as careless.
“As we always do with these, we look at them case by base and we have to assess them on their merits and it’s not just an outcome that triggers a sanction or a charge, it’s all the criteria that exists in the guidelines, so yes, I am comfortable with where we’ve landed with that one.
“The benefit of our MRO process is that we have eight to 10 angles of every incident and I appreciate that the vision will often circulate from our TV broadcast view is one or two different angles and I also appreciate that these matters can be on the margins and can look really similar.
“We look at everything throughout every game injury or not. The important point to note is we look at every individual matter on its merits and there might be things that are very similar and marginally different and that’s what we’ve got here.”
Carlton’s George Hewett was fined for a jumper punch out of his clash with Brisbane on Friday night, despite some in the media suggesting he would receive a one-game ban, with new rules likely to see it graded intentional.
Hewett’s swinging arm glances off Lachie Neale’s forearm before making contact with his chin and Kane said it remains something they don’t want to see at lower levels.
“I am okay with those being fines. It’s not what we want to see. The discussion there is whether they’re graded intentional, probably just off, but yes I am comfortable with those being fines,” she said.
“We don’t want to see that between players, it’s unnecessary, we don’t want to see it in community footy and we will continue to sanction those.”
Listen to the full chat with Laura Kane on SEN WA below: