North Melbourne ruckman Tristan Xerri has been hit with a three-week suspension at the AFL Tribunal on Monday.
The Kangaroos star was expected to throw himself at the mercy of the Tribunal after inexplicably deciding to wipe his blood on Essendon captain Andy McGrath’s face during the Kangaroos’ 12-point win over Essendon.
Xerri however didn’t totally get down on his knees and beg for mercy, apologising yet still making efforts to explain how he was provoked in the lead-up to the incident.
“I was quite displeased with the names I was being called … I was getting called an ‘f’ing c-word’, a ‘flopping c-word’,” Xerri said.
“There’s no excuses mate. It’s a poor look and I had a brain fade. It wasn’t my intention to get the blood to put on his face. I was defending myself and in that moment I just had a brain fade and did what I did, I know better. I should’ve done better.”
“It’s not right what I did. I’m sorry and I sincerely apologise for that.”
Chairman Jeff Gleeson described the incident as “disgraceful behaviour” and said had Xerri not been so candid and remorseful, he may have received a bigger penalty.
Xerri will miss games against Carlton, Brisbane and Richmond.
A video shared to Reddit seemingly showed the 27-year-old acknowledging his mistake and stating he is about to land in some serious hot water.
AFL-fan-turned-sleuth Chadwiko posted on Reddit, “Lip-reading Tristan Xerri’s post-game comments about his incident”.
The AFL fan attempts to decipher an interaction between Xerri and North defender Aidan Corr post-game.
“Yeah, I hit him with…” Xerri is hypothesised as saying as he mimics the wipe and swipe.
“Yeah I’m f***ed. I did it.”
You can watch the post-match interaction in the player at the top of the page.
Xerri reportedly called McGrath on Sunday to apologise for his actions.
The Saturday night incident received widespread backlash, with AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon stating it is “something that we don’t want to see.”
On Monday, AFL great Nick Riewoldt told Triple M radio he expected Xerri to be suspended for a month for his actions.
“We saw something we haven’t seen in a long, long time: a player wiping blood on another player’s face. I think he’ll get a month. The AFL would hate the optics,” Riewoldt said on Triple M’s Mick in the Morning.
“Well, the lead-up was he copped one a minute earlier from Andrew McGrath and went to ground, he obviously had a bit of blood. McGrath came over and called him soft for going to ground, and it looked like he was saying, ‘Oh, I’m soft? I’m soft? Look at this!’, and then wiped his face.
“He’s gone three or four times to find a bit of blood, and that’s the part that is going to stitch him up. We’ll see but it’s referred directly to the tribunal and that’s never a good sign for a player.”
AFL Tribunal reasoning for three-week ban
The intentional act of wiping blood from your nose onto the face of another player is disgraceful behaviour.
Xerri’s hand was quite close to McGrath’s open mouth in circumstances where numerous players were pushing and shoving, where the blood could quite easily have made contact with McGrath’s mouth.
The appearance or the look of the act is quite shocking. On any view, the act qualifies as serious misconduct.
We also take into account the fact that Xerri pleaded guilty to the serious misconduct charge and made no attempt whatsoever than to minimise the nature of his conduct.
Xerri’s evidence was impressive. He stated that he suffered a lapse in judgment, but that there were no excuses. He said that he suffered a brain fade, and that he knows better and should have done better.
We have viewed all of the video evidence and taking that into account, together with Xerri’s evidence, it is clear that he had suffered a blow to the face and that he was upset at being taunted for having staged or flopped.
It is of some significance that Xerri admitted that there was blood on his hand, despite the fact that the vision did not clearly show this to be the case.
Although the vision did clearly show that Xerri’s nose was bleeding and that he wiped his nose with his hand before touching McGrath’s face, the concession Sherry made goes to his credit.
We also note that Xerri took it upon himself to speak to his doctor about the medical aspects of his conduct.
In the end, however, we are of the view that this serious misconduct warrants a suspension of three matches.
The Buckley and Howe cases are quite significantly less serious.
Those players wiped blood onto the jumper and shorts respectively of their opponents. There was no meaningful risk of the communication of a blood borne disease and the appearance of the act, while highly unsatisfactory, was not of the same disgraceful character as occurred here.
We note finally that, 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.
Originally published as Tristan Xerri cops three-week suspension after blood-smearing incident