North Melbourne ruckman Tristan Xerri has been suspended for three matches after rubbing blood from his nose on the face of Essendon captain Andrew McGrath.

Xerri pleaded guilty to the charge of serious misconduct for the incident at the AFL tribunal, as the Kangaroos argued for a two-match suspension.

The 27-year-old claimed McGrath’s teammates called him a “weak c-word” and “effing flopping c-word”, which resulted in him losing his cool after kicking a goal in the second quarter of North’s 12-point win on Saturday night.

Despite being unhappy with the abuse levelled at him by Essendon’s players, Xerri expressed remorse for his actions, calling the moment involving McGrath “a brain fade”.

“The next situation unfolded which I’m completely owning. It’s not right what I did, I’m sorry, and I sincerely apologised for that,” he said.

“They accused me of flopping. I just wanted to defend myself and show that I don’t do that — I had a genuine reason that I was on the ground. I wanted to show them, I wanted to extract blood to show them that I was bleeding.

“It was a lapse in judgement. There’s no excuses made.”

Xerri also admitted he knew there was blood on his right hand before wiping it on McGrath’s face and revealed he had spoken to a doctor regarding the risk of spreading an infectious disease with his actions in the aftermath of the incident.

The Kangaroos star said he had spoken to McGrath on Sunday morning to apologise for his actions, saying the Essendon captain “took it very well and we had a good conversation”.

While tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson KC labelled Xerri’s act as “disgraceful behaviour”, he said Xerri’s honesty in admitting there was blood on his hand despite that not being clear on the match vision worked in his favour. 

“If not for Xerri’s early plea and his impressive, candid and remorseful evidence, we may have considered a sanction of more than three weeks was appropriate,” Gleeson said.

The suspension means North Melbourne (2-1) will be without Xerri for its matches against Carlton, Brisbane and Richmond.