Steven May banned by AFL tribunal for bump on Carlton’s Francis Evans
Despite nearly every player being on his side, Steven May was still banned for his bump on Francis Evans. And it’s a case of the AFL hiding behind its favourite tribunal play, writes Scott Gullan.
Steven May got done over by that pesky “reasonable player” at the AFL Tribunal despite seemingly every current day player being on his side.
The “reasonable player” is a favourite of the league’s judiciary as he has the ability to slow down, change direction and avoid contact in the blink of an eye. He’s basically football’s Superman.
It took the tribunal 95 minutes to declare the good old “reasonable player” would have been able to do his magic in the 0.56sec a biomechanist said May had to make a decision and not concuss Carlton’s Francis Evans.
RECAP THE HEARING AS IT HAPPENED BELOW
The three-week verdict is going to further confuse a playing cohort who are struggling to understand what they can and can’t do on a football field.
May said he was “shocked” he didn’t take possession given the way the ball was bouncing.
“It was sort of skimming across the surface, so I definitely thought it was my ball, given how the previous couple of bounces went,” he said.
“I just can’t believe I didn’t take possession … I thought I did everything right, I was just a bit shocked.”
You can’t help but think May’s reputation wasn’t in the back of the tribunal’s mind. They know he plays hard, he has form for running through opponents so he was never going to get the benefit of the doubt like Fremantle captain Alex Pearce who got his three-match suspension squashed for a similar incident.
Clearly the long deliberation showed the tribunal panel – which included ex-Richmond defender Darren Gaspar and former Sydney and Adelaide forward Scott Stevens – understood the gravity of the situation and the outrage it was going to cause.
We even found out in the tribunal that Evans was surprised he ended up with the ball before May but that was in a text exchange which was ruled by chairman Jeff Gleeson as having no weight.
Evans’ captain Patrick Cripps summed it up best for everyone in the lead-up: “You never want to see a player get injured but I don’t understand what we want players to do.”
What we want players to do is sit down and do a few training sessions with the “reasonable player” because he knows exactly how to behave.
In Gleeson’s long explanation at the end of the three-hour hearing the “reasonable player” got mentioned three times, there was also an unreasonable and just a reasonable by itself thrown in.
While the AFL admitted in their submission that everything happened “very very quickly” the tribunal declared May had a “long time” to change his course, to realise he wasn’t going to get first to the ball and what they really wanted him to do is something which goes against the grain of every AFL player … pull out of the contest.
It all came down to the final bounce of the ball.
May said it was a slippery night so generally the ball was skidding on, the tribunal saw – courtesy of a frame-by-frame slow motion replay – that the second last bounce before Evans gathered it had sat up so the Demons defender should have calculated that the next one would have been the same.
Of course, the “reasonable player” would have done that.
The fact Evans “slightly” moved his body before impact also put May in because his reaction wasn’t as quick.
“Evans had time to position his body just slightly so as to turn slightly away from May,” Gleeson said. “This gives some indication that May had sufficient time to make some attempt to move his body in a way that minimised or avoided the impact to Evans.
“May made no attempt to change his path, his body position or his velocity at any time leading up to or in the contest. As a result, the effect was that he ran through Evans at high speed. A reasonable player would not have done so.”
Boom. There he is again.
Gleeson declared May had a “relatively long period of time” to sum up the key features of the contest. He said it wasn’t a “split second” thing because he’d come from a sufficient distance away with an unimpeded view.
May said he accelerated because he thought he’d get to the ball first. The tribunal said he should have been thinking about what would happen if he didn’t get there first.
Right oh, then. So double-guessing and doubting what you’re about to attempt to do is part of the “reasonable player” mantra now.
It’s an understatement to say the May verdict isn’t going to go down well in the football world. This isn’t players sooking because some of their mates are getting rubbed out, there is genuine confusion about how a game which involves physical contests every couple of seconds is being policed.
The game has come so far in changing behaviour for the better. This case shouldn’t have been one to stand on a hill and make a stance over because rather than help it will only hinder more.
Originally published as Steven May banned by AFL tribunal for bump on Carlton’s Francis Evans
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