the case of Fremantle captain Alex Pearce from Round 11<\/a>, where the defender had his three-game suspension overturned in what was widely considered a crucial test case for players contesting the ball in incidents which cause a concussion. <\/p>\nBut the Tribunal ultimately decided May \u201cengaged in rough conduct that was unreasonable in the circumstances\u201d, claiming that he \u201chad sufficient time with an unimpeded view of what was before him to determine what he could and should do in the likely event that he did not reach the ball either first or at the same time\u201d. <\/p>\n
Scroll down for the Tribunal\u2019s full reasoning for its verdict.<\/p>\n
Anderson\u2019s nine reasons why May\u2019s act wasn\u2019t rough conduct:<\/p>\n
1 – May was contesting the ball <\/p>\n
2 – Legitimately expected to get to the ball first. Has his hands out, expecting he can get to the ball first<\/p>\n
3 – Both travelling at pace, reasonable for both to do so<\/p>\n
4 – Unexpected bounce of the ball on its fourth bounce<\/p>\n
5 – By the time he realises Evans is there, it\u2019s too late to slow or change momentum significantly<\/p>\n
6 – Doesn\u2019t move off his line<\/p>\n
7 – Doesn\u2019t tuck elbow in or rotate, doesn\u2019t jump off ground<\/p>\n
8 – Attempts to slow at the end, even though it\u2019s too late<\/p>\n
9 – May is significantly taller than Evans. <\/p>\n
Following the Tribunal\u2019s findings, dual North Melbourne premiership player David King said he \u201cfundamentally agreed\u201d with the trajectory of the AFL\u2019s assessment of these incidents. <\/p>\n
\u201cI reckon they\u2019re saying when you know contact (is inevitable) \u2026 you have a duty of care,\u201d he began on Fox Footy\u2019s First Crack Preview. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happens from here, you make your own decisions \u2026 the AFL are clearly saying the game has changed and you now have to assess your role and the duty of care to the opposition from there forward. I fundamentally agree with that. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re out of control when arriving \u2014 having made that decision \u2014 you\u2019re in trouble, which I think is a good thing for the game, personally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Hawthorn sharpshooter Ben Dixon vehemently opposed King\u2019s view. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s rubbish. Eight inches that ball bounces the other way, Steven May gets that ball,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
King replied: \u201cYou\u2019re arguing that\u2019s eight inches. The AFL is arguing the decision to be absolutely going flat-chat with a collision inevitable, you have to make sure you miss the head.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dixon concluded: \u201cSo, what they\u2019re saying now is we\u2019ve got a contact sport into a caution sport. You\u2019ve got to approach that with caution \u2026 that\u2019s the fabric of our game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tribunal\u2019s full reasoning for the verdict:<\/p>\n
The football was handballed over the head of Francis Evans and towards the Carlton goal.<\/p>\n
Evans turned and accelerated quickly to retrieve the ball. When he did so, he was several meters in the clear. Steven May had been running back towards the goal, and appears from the vision to have been approximately 20 meters away from Evans when he first saw that the handball had gone over the head of Evans.<\/p>\n
May changed direction and ran at speed towards the ball. We find that at the moment that May changed direction and ran towards the ball, a reasonable player would have realised that it was highly likely that Evans would reach the ball before May did.<\/p>\n
There was, of course, the possibility that, if everything went right, from May\u2019s perspective, he may reach the ball at about the same time as Evans, but only if the ball only bounced low and fast on every bounce away from Evans and towards May.<\/p>\n
We find that when May changed direction, a reasonable player would have realised that there was little, if any, chance that May would reach the ball first.<\/p>\n
The most he could have hoped was that he would arrive at about the same time as Evans, and as we have said, it was far more likely that he would reach the ball after Evans.<\/p>\n
May then accelerated towards the ball. He appears to have made no allowance for the likelihood that Evans would reach the ball first. In the circumstances, he should have done so.<\/p>\n
Much emphasis was placed on the fact that the last of the four times that the ball bounced, it did so in a more upright manner, and that brought the ball closer to Evans than to May and that May could not have foreseen this.<\/p>\n
May said that the ground was wet and that therefore the ball tended to skid through.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged, however, that even in the wet, it is possible the ball will bounce up.<\/p>\n
Here the vision shows that the second last bounce also bounces in an upright manner, so May could and should have observed that the next bounce may well also sit up.<\/p>\n
May could and should have realised before the last bounce that he remained unlikely to get to the ball first. By the second last bounce he could, and should have realised that Evans would reach the ball first and likely take possession of the ball.<\/p>\n
Both players had a clear and unimpeded view of the ball and of each other. As he gathered the ball, Evans had time to position his body just slightly so as to turn slightly away from May.<\/p>\n
This gives some indication that May had sufficient time to make some attempt to move his body in a way that minimised or avoided the impact to Evans.<\/p>\n
May had his arms out to gather the ball, he had sufficient time to retract them noticeably, indicating that he had some reaction time.<\/p>\n
May made no attempt to change his path, his body position or his velocity at any time leading up to or in the contest.<\/p>\n
As a result, the effect was that he ran through Evans at high speed. A reasonable player would not have done so.<\/p>\n
May did not have a lot of time to do so, but he had sufficient time to avoid or minimise a high speed collision with a player who was gathering the ball.<\/p>\n
The collision involving Alex Pearce was used by way of comparison. In that matter, the players arrived at the contest almost simultaneously, and yet Pearce had time to drop his arm in an attempt to minimise contact.<\/p>\n
Evidence from the biomechanist states that may had only 0.56 seconds from the time that the ball landed for its final bounce until the moment of the collision, and that he would have needed at least 0.2 to 0.25 seconds to react, noting that this is the reaction time in controlled laboratory environments.<\/p>\n
We find, however, that May could and should have reacted before the moment of the last bounce of the ball. Even if, contrary to our view, May could and should not have reacted until the final bounce of the ball, we find that he had sufficient time to position his body so that he was no longer attempting to gather the ball.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to note in this regard that May had a relatively long period of time to sum up the key features of the contest.<\/p>\n
This was not a situation where May had a split second in which to assess what might happen in the contest and to consider what he might do if the ball did not bounce in an entirely favourable way for him.<\/p>\n
May ran a sufficient distance and had sufficient time with an unimpeded view of what was before him to determine what he could and should do in the likely event that he did not reach the ball either first or at the same time.<\/p>\n
We find that May engaged in rough conduct that was unreasonable in the circumstances.<\/p>\n
As we said in the Pearce matter, an outcome of concussion does not inevitably result in a finding of at least careless conduct.<\/p>\n
Every incident must be and is examined and determined on its own facts.<\/p>\n
Here, the collision resulted in a concussion to a player, and that collision was caused or contributed to by a failure by May to take reasonable care.<\/p>\n
A reasonable player in today\u2019s game would not have collided with Evans in the manner that occurred here. <\/p>\n
Recap David Zita\u2019s live coverage of May\u2019s hearing in our blog below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After an hour and 40 minutes of deliberation, the AFL Tribunal has upheld Steven May\u2019s rough conduct charge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[17288,638,11292,64,63,55,639,17287,17283,17291,17284,17285,8011,9125,3231,52,681,15631,17282,17290,17286,85,8018,17289],"class_list":["post-15811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-adrian-anderson","tag-afl","tag-alex-pearce","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-careless-conduct","tag-concussed-player","tag-conduct-charge","tag-contentious-case","tag-crucial-test-case","tag-david-zita","tag-francis-evans","tag-jack-jovanovski","tag-jeff-gleeson","tag-jon-ralph","tag-lauren-wood","tag-live-coverage","tag-marking-contest","tag-premiership-defender","tag-sports","tag-steven-may","tag-test-case"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}