Ladder-leading Gold Coast is at the AFL Tribunal tonight trying to free young star Bailey Humphrey from a two-game suspension. Live below!
As it stands Humphrey will miss games against Melbourne on Easter Sunday, and against Sydney in Gather Round.
Watch every match of every round of the AFL Premiership Season LIVE and ad-break free during play on FOX FOOTY, available on Kayo Sports | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.
Follow Bailey Humphrey’s appeal live below!
Adrian Anderson represented the Suns while Sally Flynn represented the AFL in front of Tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson and jurors Jordan Bannister and Shane Wakelin.
The Suns argued it was not a dangerous tackle and, if that attempt to have the charge thrown out failed, argued the impact should be lower than high.
Humphrey said he had never been suspended in his 65 career games, and said while he tried to pin one of Rioli’s arms the Tigers player’s force and motion “put him off balance” and “created a 360 motion”.
“He’s tried to side-step me, and I’ve tried to just tackle him properly. My left arm grabs onto his elbow but his force of trying to break the tackle makes my arm split to the hips, that’s when I had no arm and he had arms free, so I tried to tackle him because I knew he could handball the ball to the teammates he had around him,” Humphrey said.
“You can see my right leg starting to swing off the ground … his momentum is starting to swing me around in a 360 motion and I’m just trying to continue the tackle.
“I couldn’t stay upright because his momentum had taken me off balance. Otherwise I would have.”
The AFL asked whether he had a good grip on Rioli, saying: “you’ve got a hold of him and you’re able to hold onto him until he hits the ground, do you agree?”
Humphrey responded: “Well, yeah, because I tackled him.”
However he disagreed that his force rotating Rioli caused the momentum of the tackle.
“I was off-balance, so I was in a slinging motion … so I was just trying to tackle him because I assumed he still had the ball,” Humphrey said.
“I didn’t really have control of the force because he was the one that created it.”
The AFL argued Humphrey forcefully rotates and slings Rioli to the ground with excessive force and that it was his momentum rather than Rioli’s that caused the tackle to unfold as it did.
PREVIEW
Humphrey copped a rough conduct charge after his sling tackle on Richmond’s Maurice Rioli junior during Saturday’s win at the MCG.
The incident was graded as careless with high contact and high impact resulting in the two-game suspension.
While Rioli’s arms were free the slinging nature of the incident, resulting in Rioli’s head hitting the turf, drew the attention of the Match Review.
Suns coach Damien Hardwick laughed off the incident post-game on Saturday, saying it did not warrant a sanction and “should have been holding the ball”.
Discussion about this post