In the opening quarter of the Hawks – Lions prelim at the MCG last Saturday night, Hawthorn’s Jack Ginnivan clashed with Brisbane’s Eric Hipwood. Ginnivan appeared to rag-doll Hipwood a couple of times as he lay on the ground.
He got up and moved away, and then Neale ran by and closed in on Ginnivan. The pair came together, Ginnivan went to ground, and both players separated.
The match review officer charged Neale with striking, classed as intentional conduct, medium impact, body contact, with a one-match ban.
The Tribunal hearing was on Tuesday night, where Neale’s counsel argued that there was no strike, or if there was it was of “negligible impact”.
The fall-back position was that if the offence was found, then “exceptional and compelling circumstances existed to overturn the ban.
Neale testified he had seen Ginnivan jumper-punching Hipwood and went over “to express my disappointment”.
He said contact was more like a bump or body-check. He said he had spoken to Ginnivan on the day of the hearing, who he said had agreed it wasn’t a strike. However Ginnivan was not called to give evidence.
The AFL argued that it was “clearly a strike”, that Neale had run away from the play to go to Ginnivan and that even if there was no injury and the Hawk had got up straight away, the potential for harm was there.
Neale’s counsel argued that the Lions star had played 320 games of AFL and competed in “thousands and thousands of contests” without suspension and had won two best and fairests at the Brownlow – making the exceptional and compelling circumstances.
Giving lengthy reasons for the decision after two and a half hours of deliberations, Tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson KC said that when the incident was played at normal speed, it was clear this was a “strike to the guts”.
The new guidelines against gut-punches were “to stamp out this very sort of conduct” and that not even Neale’s outstanding record made a one-match ban inappropriate or unreasonable. The ban stood.
Now Neale is back, two days before the grand final, seeking again to have the ban overturned
If he fails, then Brisbane will lose him for the grand final, and Neale will have played his last game for the Lions before a likely off-season move to Collingwood.
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