Brad Scott slams MRP decision to suspend Geelong forward Tom Hawkins

NORTH Melbourne coach Brad Scott joined the chous of dissaproval over the suspension of Geelong star Tom Hawkins declaring it flew in the face of previous decisions.

NORTH Melbourne coach Brad Scott joined the chous of dissaproval over the suspension of Geelong star Tom Hawkins declaring it flew in the face of previous decisions.

Scott, who faces the Cats this weekend, echoed the thoughts of his brother Chris, the Geelong coach, who was surprised and frusrated by the decision to ban Hawkins for a week.

Geelong chose not to challenge the one-match suspension for striking GWS defender Phil Davis, fearing a two-week ban if they lost.

The North coach said on Wednesday it “didn’t look like a reportable offence” and was further evidence of inconstency from the AFL’s match review panel.

“This is the one where it seems to be it flies in the face of all the previous other decisions,” he said.

“It didn’t look like a reportable offence, let alone a two-week suspension type offence (reduced to one week with an early guilty plea).”

“If the MRP has made a statement then that’s really unfortunate for Tom because they’ve made it probably after the fact.

“It’s all very well to say players are on notice now. But Tom didn’t get much notice did he?

Tom Hawkins copped a one-game ban for striking Phil Davis. Picture: George Salpigtidis

“The frustrating thing was Mark Evans made it very clear when he took over (as the AFL’s football operations manager) that we don’t want players to miss games unless they do something stupid that deserves to miss games.

“For these innocuous sorts of things that we don’t want really like and we don’t want to condone, we’ll fine the players for that, and that’s the way it has always been since Mark came in.”

But MRP member Nathan Burke defended the Hawkins suspension, despite admitting that in previous years the incident would have been viewed as not worthy of a ban.

“That system has been in play now for a year-and-a-half so it’s about time people started to realise that for the intentional strike to the head, the minimum is two weeks down to one,” Burke told Fox Sports News.