Called a snitch: Inside the case that blew up the AFL players’ code

The match review officer and tribunal largely do a good job. Not words that get often uttered, and I say them despite the debacle of the past weeks.

Tony Jewell, the 1980 premiership coach and worldly philosopher, used to say that “in coaching you need to get at least 90 per cent of your decisions right”.

I took that to mean that while you need to be very good, you don’t need to be perfect. If we take this as the pass mark, we can mount a case that the MRO does well.

But like umpiring, we tend to overlook the correct decisions, considering those to be passé, and shine the brightest lights on any error, real or perceived.

I’ve experienced the AFL’s judiciary system from a couple of different perspectives, as a player, in club roles and at the AFL.

I was walking up some stairs at AFL House six months into my role as head of umpiring at the AFL when I had an epiphany. It popped into my head that the one thing that in football wanted from its umpires – consistency – was entirely unobtainable.

These are the three reasons why.

1. We barrack for decisions depending on the colour of the scarf we’re wearing. Our game is tribal, and that’s what makes it great. It also makes us completely irrational.
2. Most people don’t know the rules (including me before I went into umpiring). It’s difficult to ascertain whether a decision is right or wrong if you have the wrong starting point.
3. Umpires make mistakes.

As a football manager, you get a first-hand look at the system and, for the most part, I didn’t have many complaints with the results.

Bitter disappointment only arose once. This was in the Wil Powell homophobic slur incident in 2024, when I was with the Suns, and recent events have only made this look more unjust.

Four weeks before Wil’s charge, Port Adelaide’s Jeremy Finlayson had received a three-match penalty for using a homophobic slur on the field. Will got five matches for no material difference in the charge. It felt manifestly unjust, with no compassion for Wil whatsoever. Of course most of our compassion should and does go to the victim and the LGBTQ+ community, but we need to remember the perpetrator is human, too.

Six weeks after that, St Kilda’s Lance Collard received a six-match ban for the same thing. He has now been found guilty of a second offence and effectively received two weeks on appeal after initially being hit with a seven-week ban.

We live in the grey, and each scenario might be different, but this inconsistency cannot be allowed to continue. The chair of the appeals board explained in his findings that part of the inconsistency could be found in the fact that the previous cases were deals done between player and the AFL, whereas this was the first to go to the tribunal.

Whilst the penalty in some ways can be justified, it exposes a flaw in the process.

And having the now former chair of the appeals board say something so in conflict with the message the AFL has been trying to send suggests there is a deeper organisational issue for AFL House to explore.

Having a tribunal member dialling into Zak Butters’ hearing from his car wasn’t the tribunal’s finest moment, but that’s also an organisational problem, not a decision-making problem.

Behind the hysteria, they get it right 90 per cent of the time.

Which brings me to my own experience as a player. In round two of 2001, my Tigers were playing a fired-up Western Bulldogs at the MCG. In the first five minutes, Tony Liberatore hit Matthew Knights off the ball. It was a country footy hit – ugly. I saw it and was the first to remonstrate. “Libba” is a fighter; I’m not. He put one on my chin as well.

It was my second game as captain and having taken the reins only a few months before in an awkward handover from Matthew, there were many reasons for me to “fly the flag”. I tried … with poor effect. First lesson in leadership: don’t try to be something you’re not.

Post-game, coach Danny Frawley asked who had seen the incident. I said I had.

As captain, the club asked me to do media. “What do you want me to say?” I asked the relevant people. “Just say you didn’t see it,” came the response.

First lesson of media management: don’t get the one person who saw the incident to do the media, and then tell them to say they didn’t see it.

It was the talking point of the weekend. By Monday, it had reached fever pitch.

My part in the drama would have ended had the incident been captured on video. It wasn’t.

Matty and I were called to a meeting with our CEO Mark Brayshaw and Danny. The AFL had called. There was no vision. If anyone had seen the incident, the AFL would like them to be a witness at the tribunal.

I had walked into the meeting thinking the “players’ code” – what happens on the ground stays on the ground – was alive. The AFL pressure didn’t worry me too much, but what “Knighta” wanted did. He wanted the truth to be told. So it was decided I would tell my version of events – that is, to tell the truth. That hadn’t happened in a big case like this before.

In the meeting when explaining what had happened, I drew it up on the board, showing where I had been, etc. I had all the information correct … except on the wrong side of the ground. I wouldn’t be told otherwise until I saw the lead-up on tape.

I assume this was due to adrenalin, shock, stress or something of the sort. Two people’s versions of the same event can be vastly different, without either of them knowingly telling a lie. Sound familiar?

It was the most famous tribunal case I was ever a part of. Upon entering the hearing, I felt strangely calm. Chairman Brian Collis asked what had occurred, and I told it as I remembered. The air felt like it came out of the room a bit. I understood the gravity and ramifications, but outside a tribunal hearing it felt like the truth wasn’t a bad starting point. “Libba” got a five-match suspension.

What were the ramifications for me? Not much, I’ve got to say. The next time we played the Bulldogs, Paul Dimattina called me a “snitch”. He owned a restaurant in Lygon Street; I ate there occasionally. I didn’t know what it meant until I watched The Sopranos years later.

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