AFL greats Nathan Brown and Dermott Brereton have both defended Collingwood star Brayden Maynard, who could face sanction for umpire contact.
During his side’s narrow 104-98 win over the Gold Coast Suns, a fired-up Maynard ran into a melee and incidentally bumped into an umpire.
Touk Miller and Braydon Maynard contact an umpire. Nine
The incident came after Maynard copped a heavy shot from Ben Long moments earlier and the Magpies star raced in to get to his opponent during the scuffle, which saw the umpire and Suns player Touk Miller caught in the crosshairs.
Nine journalist Damian Barrett argued the gravity of the situation involving a match official required a stricter response, but not everyone agreed.
“I would be staggered if he gets anything other than a fine,” Brown said on Nine’s Sunday Footy Show.
“I say that because what Michael Christian, the match review officer, has to do is work out: did he intentionally set out to contact the umpire?
“That would take all of two minutes at any tribunal.”
Barrett strongly pushed back against downplaying the incident and said it “you can’t ignore” the contact and said players needed to have “duty of care” in those situations, but Brereton said it could open a can of worms.
“They’ll find a murky line there. I think whichever way you go, it’s going to have to be 100 per cent consistent forever,” he said.
“What we get are situations like this … and we give them as penalty, and then we fade in and out of that adjudication or thereabouts in coming times with anything that happens. Whatever happens must be the standard forever more.”