AFL tribunal: Harley Reid fails to downgrade ban, Rhylee West free to play

West Coast and Harley Reid have failed to downgrade the star’s ban at the tribunal, while the Western Bullodgs were able to get their man off scot-free. See the details here.

Harley Reid of the Eagles looks on during the 2024 AFL Round 12 match between the West Coast Eagles and the St Kilda Saints at Optus Stadium on June 01, 2024 in Perth, Australia. (Photo by Will Russell/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

West Coast wunderkind Harley Reid will not play again until round 16 after his bid to have a two-week suspension halved was dismissed by the AFL tribunal.

The ascendant Eagle was ruled out of the rising star race by the dangerous tackle on St Kilda’s Darcy Wilson but attempted to reduce his ban from two matches to one, only for the tribunal to deem the initial grading of “high impact” was correct.

Reid, through his lawyer David Grace, argued the impact should have been downgraded to medium but tribunal chair Renee Enbom said the “lifting, upending and slinging” nature of the tackle meant it should remain high impact.

Harley Reid will miss two matches. Picture: Getty Images

“(Wilson) is lucky that he landed the way he did. Had he landed differently, then the outcome could have been a terrible head or neck injury,” Enbom said.

Grace painstakingly tried to compare Reid’s sling tackle to four other examples from the 2023 season in his submission but Enbom dismissed those examples as unlike the “unique tackle” that brought Wilson down on his back and head.

Wilson felt the impact on his head but was uninjured by the incident.

Grace argued that Reid should not be held to the same account as older players given he is a “young, exuberant, future star of the game”.

The tribunal deliberated for over an hour on the case, with Reid left confused and appeared to mouth “what does that mean” when the verdict was given.

Reid’s sling tackle on Darcy Wilson.

Given West Coast has the bye in round 14, Reid will now miss the next three weeks.

His suspension, alongside second-favourite Sam Darcy’s two-week ban, threw the rising star betting market into chaos, given Reid was seen as a virtual shoe-in before the tackle.

North Melbourne pair Colby McKercher and George Wardlaw leapt to the top of the favourites for the award.

AFL footy boss Laura Kane on Tuesday night reiterated that there were no plans for the league to remove the fairness component of the rising star award.

“I have been pretty clear this week saying that we don’t have an appetite to change the criteria for the rising star,” she told AFL 360.

Kane said she was not interested in splitting suspension incidents into categories to keep some players eligible for accidental incidents.

WEST KNOWS BEST

Rhylee West’s convincing evidence has cleared his own name, with the Western Bulldog forward free to play against the Brisbane Lions on Friday.

West had a one-game ban for an apparent bump on Collingwood’s Jeremy Howe dismissed by the AFL tribunal on Tuesday, after he convinced the tribunal he was attempting to tackle Howe’s teammate Brayden Maynard and not going after Howe.

Acting on behalf of West, Adrian Anderson successfully argued that the Bulldog was attempting to tackle Maynard in the incident and had no intention of bumping Howe, and only braced for contact when he saw the Magpie veteran at the last moment.

Rhylee West is free to play. Picture: Getty Images

“He (Howe) moves into my path and that sort of causes that contact,” West said in evidence.

While Sally Flynn argued on behalf of the AFL that West could have broken Howe’s jaw in the eventual hit, the Collingwood veteran was cleared by a head assessment of concussion and had no after effects of the hit.

After an hour of deliberation, tribunal chair Renee Enbom said West’s compelling evidence “exposed an important part of the incident that is not obvious in the broadcast vision” that West was making a play on Maynard, not Howe.

West’s teammate Sam Darcy was rubbed out for two weeks for a separate hit on Maynard from the same game and did not challenge that suspension.

Originally published as AFL tribunal: Harley Reid fails to downgrade ban, Rhylee West free to play