AFL Tribunal: Warning sent to entire competition after Jackson Archer fails to overturn ban

On a night where three players challenged suspensions for head-high hits and all failed, the tribunal put its foot down. In the case of Jackson Archer, a warning was sent to every AFL player.

Jackson Archer is stiff - let’s call it bloody stiff - but, like it or not, we’re going to have to accept Tuesday night’s tribunal decision as the AFL’s new norm.

Every single player in the competition is now on notice.

If you make contact with the head of an opposition player at any sort of speed - almost under any circumstance - you can expect a lengthy holiday.

The North Melbourne defender will miss the next three matches after the AFL tribunal upheld the match review verdict - careless with severe impact and high contact - over his sickening collision with Bulldog Luke Cleary.

And, in handing down the verdict, tribunal chairman Jeff Gleeson KC served a warning to the entire competition in a precedent that will have far-reaching consequences in 2025 and beyond.

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Jackson Archer will miss three games. Picture: Getty Images

He stressed that the reason why these collisions have become so rare in footy these days is that most AFL players had learnt the lesson.

What he was intimating was that Archer - at 22 and only in his fourth AFL season - was one of those who had not.

As Garry Lyon said on AFL 360: “We have lauded for many years what we would term an unconditional attack on the footy or the man with the footy … that’s what we have respected from players for generations.”

“What we are now expecting from our players is that you have to be conditional.

“This is a hard lesson for a young man who is showing unbelievable courage in the early stages of his career but what the AFL is saying to him is ‘You are one of the last to learn this lesson … and after (this verdict) it is incumbent on every player in the competition to learn it, whether you like it or not’.”

Geelong premiership great and former match review panel member Jimmy Bartel has labelled as “pure madness” what the AFL tribunal expects of players in a high-speed, high-impact ballistic sport.

Jimmy Bartel was not happy at all with the tribunal’s decision. Picture: AAP Image/Scott Barbour

Bartel said on 3AW: “The current-day playing group is going to have to carry the can for past mismanagements of concussions.”

“So everyone has to pay now because ‘we’re (the AFL is) worried about legal actions going forward. Bad luck Jackson Archer, you are going to have to pay the price as far as football games go’.”

Bartel added: “I can’t repeat this enough, I am not blaming Luke Cleary. We all wish him well. He was going about the game very well and he made some split decisions as well.

“But there are accidents in our game. We’re a high-speed, high-contact game and the way the tribunal describes such actions or requests from players to approach the game is just pure madness.

“I think it would drive people mad if they heard the statement from the tribunal.”

The AFL has quite rightly legislated to protect the head under almost any circumstances, given the massive concerns over concussions.

But accidents can and still will happen.

Match review officer Michael Christian should be afforded more leverage - and more wriggle room - in his matrix for certain situations.

Luke Cleary suffered a concussion from the incident. Picture: Getty Images

This ban might not sting as much if it was a one-week, or perhaps even a two-week ban.

Three weeks seems excessive.

But don’t expect the AFL to change its course on this head-high crackdown.

In the hearing, Archer provided evidence that he had attacked the contest initially at full speed, following a coaching edict to “press hard” but reduced his velocity the closer he got to Cleary as he prepared to tackle the Bulldogs player.

The Kangaroo also said he had expected Cleary to “keep his feet” as players had always been taught from a young age.

But Gleeson insisted Archer’s response in slowing down - it was estimated to be around 25 per cent from his top speed - was simply “too little, too late”.

He said players had to assume the likelihood that their opponent in a contest could go to ground for a variety of reasons.

It’s a decision that will shock a few rival clubs who had believed Jackson had a chance to win the case, given Cleary lowered his head in the contest for an undetermined reason, and it could well have been a free kick to the Kangaroos players under the ‘below the knees’ rule.

How wrong they were!

And both Cleary, in a returned text to Archer’s the following day, and Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge expressed a view that they believed the Kangaroo should have been free to play next weekend.

It’s a difficult situation Archer found himself in when he had to make a split second decision.

Would there have been a different outcome if Archer had been seriously injured or had his leg broken - as Gary Rohan did in his landmark ‘below the knees’ gamechanger with Lindsay Thomas in 2012 - and if Cleary had emerged unscathed?

At the very least, he would have received a free kick.

And if Archer had pulled out of the contest, the incident would have been played and replayed countlessly on the plethora of TV football shows, with panelists unfairly pointing out the differences between him and his ferocious father Glenn Archer?

Originally published as AFL Tribunal: Warning sent to entire competition after Jackson Archer fails to overturn ban