Tribunal system credibility in tatters

Adrian Anderson’s Tribunal ‘system’ for the AFL just keeps throwing up decisions that fail to meet anybody’s expectations. This week we see Brad Ottens being flogged with a wet lettuce leaf for one of the more blatant behind the play strikes in recent years.

 

Quite how the system can let Ottens off with a week when Campbell Brown got two and Heath Hocking, after contesting his assessment, got three beggars belief.

 

Ottens was clearly looking at Nicoski and, equally clearly, cocked and threw the point of his elbow to strike Nicoski’s head. Dog act though it was, Campbell Brown wasn’t facing Callan Ward when he felled him, so there may have been an element of ill luck involved. AussieRulesBlog continues to contend that Heath Hocking was attempting to brush by Polkinghorne to continue his pursuit of Simon Black and did not intentionally strike Polkinghorne — not to mention Polkinghorne’s illegal block of Hocking.

 

Adding a weighting factor for incidents behind the play doesn’t sort this issue out, since all three were off the ball.

 

The system works tolerably well for more minor infractions, but simply doesn’t consistently provide results that meet football community expectations for more serious matters. The Tribunal can take account of factors in a way that the inflexible points system can’t. On any objective review, Ottens should be serving a longer penance than either Brown or Hocking.