As Lachie Neale prepares to front the appeals board, it’s a fine time to look back at other players who found themselves in strife for the most important game of the year.
We have to remember that the offending incidents don’t need to happen in a preliminary final, however.
Andrew Gaff’s punch that broke Andrew Brayshaw’s jaw in an fiery, fractious and infamous Western Derby saw the Eagles player miss West Coast’s 2018 grand final win five weeks later.
Collingwood pair Anthony Rocca and Jason Cloke missed out on the decider a year apart, in 2003 and 2002 respectively, thanks to two-game striking bans.
Rocca hit Port Adelaide’s Brendon Lade and failed on appeal, while Cloke hit Adelaide’s Tyson Edwards in his prelim and also could not convince the appeals board.
North Melbourne’s Jason McCartney missed out on the Kangaroos’ most-recent flag, in 1999, for hitting Brisbane’s Clarke Keating in the prelim.
Lesson to be learned here: stop hitting people, people!
Also in 1989, Hawthorn’s Peter Schwab missed out on arguably the greatest grand final of all time, when he was given three weeks for a high hit on Essendon’s Andrew Manning in the semi-final.
Perhaps the most infamous one of all happened in 1967, when Richmond ruck Neville Crowe missed the grand final (and a Tigers win over Geelong) for a striking charge on Carlton’s John Nicholls in the semi-final. Nicholls had initiated things with a jumper punch, then Crowe swung, but missed.
However the umpire thought he connected and Nicholls responded … enthusiastically, falling to ground. Video evidence was not acceptable at the time, and the tribunal gave Crowe a four-week ban.
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