Police should charge Andrew Gaff over punch on Andrew Brayshaw

Andrew Gaff should be charged by police for his attack on Fremantle’s Andrew Brayshaw.

The laws of the land do not stop at the boundary line of a football oval, but you would be forgiven for thinking that they did.

If West Coast’s Andrew Gaff had been wearing an Eagles scarf and sitting on the wing of the Perth Stadium when he hit Fremantle’s Andrew Bradshaw, he would have been dragged out the back, driven from the ground in a divi van and almost certainly charged on the spot.

Fremantle rookie Andrew Brayshaw before he underwent surgery to repair a broken jaw and three ‘displaced’ lower teeth. Photo: Facebook/Freesupporterspage

The two players were only a few metres from the seated supporters when the incident occurred, but for some inexplicable reason that means Gaff will have to be the second unluckiest bloke to have ever played at that level if he is charged.

Footballers apparently have a form of diplomatic immunity.

Leigh Matthews says Gaff is the one who will suffer the most from his actions on Sunday.

It’s an odd observation given that Bradshaw is in hospital, his jaw broken and his food set to be delivered though a straw for the immediate future.

Matthews, however, has some insight. The 66-year-old Hawthorn legend is the only VFL/AFL player to ever be charged for an act of violence on the field. That was 1985, the game was not as clean as it is now, nor as dirty as it had once been, but the match between Geelong and Hawthorn was incendiary. Five men were reported, 13 charges laid.

Matthews inexplicably punched Neville Bruns in the jaw 30m from the ball, dropping the Geelong player as he ran past — an oblivious umpire not 10m from the incident. Retribution was swift and emphatic. The Hawthorn player worked at the Sunday Observer at the time as a columnist, I was a copy boy and I remember Matthews’ blackened eyes when he came to work later that week, but it was the way he carried himself that was most remarkable.

The 1985 incident between Leigh Matthews (right) and Neville Bruns. Photo: File

Always a cheerful and confident man, broad of chest and smile, he seemed to have shrunk as he slunk down the aisle between the desks towards the small sports department at Peter Isaacson Publications in Prahran.

He looked haunted then and apparently he still is some 31 years later.

Matthews said this week that Brayshaw’s jaw would heal but Gaff will be “mortally wounded … the guilt and the shame will haunt Andrew Gaff for the rest of his life”.

The retired player and coach believes there were mysterious forces behind the decision to charge him. Was it a coincidence that a former Geelong player was sports minister? Did the state government lean on the police before a charge of “assault causing grievous bodily harm” was laid? Matthews was eventually sent on his way on a bond, but had to appeal an earlier conviction, but wonders why it became a police matter.

He doesn’t think Gaff should be charged, but it’s time football had its bubble pricked.

Why should an act that can receive a heavy sentence for anybody else on a Friday night outside a pub not be considered the same when it happens on a football field? There’s no need for CCTV or unreliable witness statements on this one, it happened in full view of a packed stadium, it was replayed on every medium across Australia yesterday. At any given minute someone in Melbourne was watching that awful moment.

Andrew Gaff holds his heads in his hands as he’s consoled by West Coast coach Adam Simpson (left). Photo: Getty Images

Gaff at least had the decency to apologise. He sounds genuinely horrified by what he did.

West Coast chief executive Trevor Nisbett has, too soon, offered the hint of an excuse. It may have been, he says, an accident.

Gaff is close to the family, played golf with Brayshaw and his brother Hamish a few days earlier. The round arm punch was not a clean cock to the jaw. It may have been aimed a shoulder or chest, but it doesn’t really matter.

Accidental or not, Brayshaw’s season is finished, his jaw is broken and teeth are missing.

If he can accept the apology and the excuse he is a better man than many, but that part of this sorry tale will play itself out.

A screengrab showing the moment that Andrew Gaff (right) strikes Fremantle midfielder Andrew Brayshaw. Photo: Supplied

The local police say they will examine the incident and so they should. Just last week James Woods QC recommended criminal sentences for those who corrupt sport through drug use or fixing. Three Pakistani players were given jail sentences for their role in a sham spot-fixing scandal some years back. Why shouldn’t players be done for assault?

Last year AFL diversity manager Ali Fahour was charged over an on-field assault but he wasn’t playing with big boys. For some reason a senior AFL game is, like the confessional, a place where police won’t go.

It is time things changed.