Alastair Clarkson says outcome decided Jackson Archer’s three-game suspension and the young Kangaroo was not the only one at fault in his collision with Luke Cleary

North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson was always going to go in to bat for his suspended player and even suggested the player he concussed played a part in their collision last weekend.

North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson has claimed that “technically” injured Western Bulldogs defender Luke Cleary could have been reported for the incident which resulted in a three-ban for Jackson Archer and that the penalty was decided only on “outcome”.

Clarkson said he wouldn’t be telling his player, including Archer, to be more careful declaring incidents are unavoidable in the “chaotic” game that they play.

The Kangaroos failed in their appeal against Archer’s suspension for rough conduct as a result of the incident where Archer’s knee hit Cleary in the head at Marvel Stadium last Saturday.

Cleary, who was first to the ball before Archer came steaming in at full pace, was knocked out, stretchered from the field and remains in concussion protocols.

Clarkson said he feared straight away that Archer, who left the field grabbing at his leg before being cleared of injury, had also been hurt and that the nature of modern-day football had created a grey area when it comes to who it at fault.

Luke Cleary of the Bulldogs is taken from the ground on a stretcher (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

But only Archer was cited by the match review officer, his role graded as careless conduct, high contact and severe impact.

“At the end of the day, there’s a duty of care of both players in that particular instance,” Clarkson said on Thursday.

“So technically, you can probably say both players could have been reported for the same incident. But then it comes down to who got injured and what the outcome was.”

“Bevo (Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge) said it could have easily been a free kick to Archer. So it’s a point of conjecture,”

“But to be fair, when it first happened, the concern for us was just around our player, and we thought ‘Arch has broken his leg’.

“So three weeks compared to 12 months - there’s a part of us is glass half-full, we’re actually pretty happy with the result, because right in the immediate aftermath of it, I thought Arch was a lot of trouble.”

North Melbourne will challenge Jackson Archer's three-match suspension at the @AFL Tribunal.

📰: https://t.co/5Fapm8Uxqb#Kangaspic.twitter.com/z4P0VgWzqk

— North Melbourne FC (@NMFCOfficial) March 17, 2025

Clarkson said the “uproar” which followed the incident was also unavoidable, and while he hadn’t seen something like it happen for a while, couldn’t rule out it happening again.

“This is a game of AFL footy where there’s a heap of collisions and that was a pretty rare one to be fair, I haven’t seen one like that for a fair period of time.

“But the game is so chaotic and unfortunately we’re going to see things like that from time to time where there’ll be uproar.

“We need probably, as a game, to work out what decision is made on it. There’s a decision that has been made on it and then we move on.”