Tom Bugg must be suspended for six weeks, writes Glenn McFarlane

MELBOURNE’S Tom Bugg must be suspended for six weeks for the sake of the game that has already taken enough recent blows to have parents concerned about their kids playing it. VOTE

Dane Rampe of the Swans remonstrates with Tomas Bugg.

MELBOURNE’S Tom Bugg must be suspended for six weeks for the sake of the game that has already taken enough recent blows to have parents concerned about their kids playing it.

Bugg’s flush left jab to the chin of Callum Mills doesn’t belong on a football field. In fact, it doesn’t belong anywhere. Do that sort of things on the streets, with accompanying with CCTV footage, in this age of the campaign against coward punches, and you could end up on a charge.

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That fact alone is surely enough for the AFL tribunal to come down in the hardest possible terms on the controversial Demon when it sits early next week.

It wasn’t brave; it wasn’t a part of the game; and it could have had a much more sinister outcome.

Thankfully, it didn’t, and at least Bugg has since been contrite and embarrassed — as he should be. The Demon doesn’t deserved to be damned forever, but he must serve his penance, and begin to regain the trust of his own teammates, and the rest of the football community.

In a week in which the Bachar Houli tribunal case and subsequent appeal finally ended in a four-week ban over the Richmond defender’s backhanded swipe to Jed Lamb’s jaw, this is the last thing the AFL needed for the image of the game.

Don’t forget that until an in-season and belated crackdown on jumper punches, it had been deemed acceptable for players to make short and sharp contact to the face and the chest so long as there was a jumper attached to it.

Public confidence was lost as a result, and there had to be a change.

FACT- one punch=established risk of death inc one of my medical colleagues this week.Sport must send strongest possible deterrent message

— Dr Peter Larkins (@doclarkins) July 1, 2017

Now the AFL tribunal, which came under intense scrutiny for an original manifestly wrong two-week penalty for Houli before it was challenged by the AFL, must punish Bugg to show that AFL football provides a safe working environment.

The Swans players did their best to hide their anger and emotion surrounding Friday night’s incident — some did it better than others — and the AFL must be thinking the same.

But just imagine what might have happened if they hadn’t kept their cool.

Dane Rampe confronts Tom Bugg on Friday night.

Bugg deserves more than the four weeks that Houli will serve, and will surely throw himself at the mercy of the tribunal — without character references from anyone, let alone the Prime Minister.

What he did was unacceptable, but at least he and Melbourne Football Club publicly acknowledged that immediately after the game.

It was intentional; it was high; it was the to the face — enough said.

Port Adelaide’s Tom Jonas copped a six-week ban for his forearm that floored West Coast’s Andrew Gaff last year.

Barry Hall was handed seven weeks for his forceful punch on Brent Staker in 2008, and could rightly expect to have served much more if that had happened now. The pair met up this week, and the raw emotion showed how the lives of each remain affected by one moment of madness.

If Bugg cops six weeks — as he should — he won’t be eligible to play until Round 22, and his place in the side for a possible first finals appearance for Melbourne in 11 years will be in jeopardy.

Then he can start winning back the trust he lost in the space of a few seconds on Friday night.