It then turned physical. The coach’s account, which the Deputy President accepted for the moment the camera did not capture, was that the man grabbed his shoulder first. What the CCTV showed next was harder for the coach. The Deputy President found he grabbed the man’s shirt and pushed and dragged him roughly 40 metres toward a gate, at one point letting go, pushing the man backwards and squaring up with his fists partially raised. Two AFL staff stepped in, walked the man off the field, and apologised to him. The man later complained through the AFL’s integrity portal.
The AFL investigated, stood the coach down on pay, put the allegations to him, showed him the footage and let him respond in writing and in meetings before ending his employment. He acknowledged telling the man to “Piss off” and “Fuck off.”
On appeal, the coach argued the Deputy President had overlooked vital context: that he was the senior official responsible for safety, that the man was trespassing, and that provocation and self-defence should have counted in his favour. He also argued he was denied a fair chance to study the CCTV and answer the case against him.
The Full Bench used the decision to clarify a point HR teams should note. Where a dismissal follows a workplace altercation, it said, the circumstances of that altercation – including provocation and self-defence – must be weighed in deciding whether there was a valid reason to dismiss, not only as mitigation later in the analysis. That sets altercation cases apart from a straightforward breach of a drug-and-alcohol or email policy, where surrounding context is usually considered at a later stage.
Even so, the point did not decide the appeal in the coach’s favour. The Full Bench found the Deputy President had taken the context into account – the closed venue, the coach’s safety responsibilities, and who made first contact – and had simply not accepted that it excused how far the coach took the physical response. It also found the AFL had given him adequate particulars and a genuine opportunity to respond, even though he saw the footage only once, on a small screen, and did not ask for further access at the time.