Chair factor zero: McGovern rubbed out
An argument about a plastic chair wasn't enough to free West Coast's star defender Jeremy McGovern whose one-match suspension for rough conduct was upheld by the AFL tribunal on Tuesday night.
Tribunal jurors Jason Johnson, Shane Wakelin and Paul Williams took 11 minutes to deliberate before concluding that contact from McGovern which sent Essendon's Matt Guelfi sliding into the Optus Stadium fence last Thursday night was unreasonable in the circumstances.
McGovern will miss his side's meeting with Hawthorn at the MCG.
McGovern told the tribunal - via a video link from Perth - that he had never intended nor expected Guelfi to collide with the fence.
“I was just attempting to get some body on Guelfi and stop his run so he couldn’t overlap the ball,” McGovern said, as his advocate David Grace QC took the tribunal through the incident frame by frame.
“I was just trying to get some body on him.”
McGovern said that once he’d committed to the action, he couldn’t have stopped.
“My momentum was away. I couldn't really control much more after this.”
Despite accepting that impact with a boundary fence is different to impact with a player, McGovern said that he wouldn’t have acted differently had the incident occurred in a different part of the ground.
A medical report from Essendon doctor Brendan De Morton tendered as evidence by AFL counsel Andrew Woods said that Guelfi had been treated for rib injuries and concussion, would miss one to two training days, and remained in doubt to play against Greater Western Sydney this week.
Mr Woods argued that this is the kind of thing that does and can happen in games across Australia and that it would be “problematic” for the jury to not reach a finding of guilt.
Mr Grace claimed that his client had not acted unreasonably and that the location of a plastic chair, adjacent to the fence, where a security guard was sitting, prevented Guelfi from effectively using his hands to avoid his head making contact with the fence.
Mr Grace said that the jury could not rule out the proposition that Guelfi would have avoided injury altogether if not for the location of the chair, and that McGovern could not be expected to take into account the security guard and chair in exercising a duty of care.
Mr Woods argued that the presence of the chair shouldn’t impact the reasonableness of the conduct.
The player advocate even queried whether the AFL should reconsider whether security guards should be stationed inside the boundary fence.
Match review officer Michael Christian had assessed the incident as careless with medium impact and high contact.
Earlier on Tuesday, Port Adelaide pair Karl Amon and Dougal Howard accepted respective one-match sanctions stemming from the Power’s win over Geelong on Saturday night. Both will be unavailable for Port’s meeting with the Western Bulldogs this weekend.
Melbourne’s Jayden Hunt, Fremantle’s Luke Ryan and Bulldog Tim English all accepted fines.