{"id":36,"date":"2025-07-15T14:17:49","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T14:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/36\/"},"modified":"2025-07-15T14:17:49","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T14:17:49","slug":"afl-tribunal-labelled-a-high-farce-for-adam-cerra-hearing-for-umpire-contact-how-much-was-he-fined-gerard-whateley-comments-on-afl-360-reactions-latest-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/36\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL Tribunal labelled a high farce for Adam Cerra hearing for umpire contact, how much was he fined, Gerard Whateley comments on AFL 360, reactions, latest news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Criticism towards the AFL for their decision to send Carlton\u2019s Adam Cerra\u2019s charge for umpire contact to the tribunal amid their mid-season rule change<\/a> has come thick and fast.<\/p>\n

The Blues star walked away from Tuesday night\u2019s hearing with a $5,500 fine<\/a>, a mere $125 closer to the Blues\u2019 hoped figure of a five grand figure than the AFL\u2019s $6,125. The end sanction was $750 less than he could have received had the league got its way.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Fox Footy\u2019s AFL 360, host and veteran broadcaster Gerard Whateley was pointed in his assessment of the league\u2019s handling of a process that required plenty of resources for so such a minuscule outcome.<\/p>\n

FOX FOOTY, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every match of every round in the 2025 Toyota AFL Premiership Season LIVE in 4K, with no ad-breaks during play. New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited-time offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve covered the Tribunal since I was a cub reporter. I\u2019ve seen high farce, when cases were cooked up in the lifts and the chairman present!\u201d Gerard Whateley began.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen players blatantly lie and pure themselves. I\u2019ve heard bio-mechanists invent the most fanciful stories. I have seen character witness, submissions from Prime Ministers to lower penalties…<\/p>\n

\u201cTonight, the AFL has reached new levels of high farce, as they quibbled over $1,250 with a panel of lawyers who will shortly bill for about $30,000.<\/p>\n

The AFL\u2019s introduction of a Tribunal hearing for any player who is sanctioned for umpire contact four times in 12 months allows the league leeway to argue for a player\u2019s suspension. <\/p>\n

UMPIRE CONTACT SANCTION (last two years)
ADAM CERRA \u2014 4<\/p>\n

MATT ROWELL \u2014 4<\/p>\n

GEORGE HEWETT \u2014 4<\/p>\n

\ufeffJACK MACRAE \u2014 4<\/p>\n

ZAK BUTTERS \u2014 3<\/p>\n

JORDAN DAWSON \u2014 3<\/p>\n

HARLEY REID \u2014 3<\/p>\n

WILLEM DREW \u2014 3<\/p>\n

HUNTER CLARK \u2014 3<\/p>\n

Four umpires have been concussed as a result of umpire contact in the last 12 months, which was undoubtedly a big part of the AFL\u2019s reason to crack down on the contact as Whateley explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t dismiss the broader principal, which is important… (but) it has gone too far. The AFL is duty-bound to its umpires to address it \u2014 the only way to do that is to confront players,\u201d continued Whateley.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut to go into a Tribunal hearing with two lawyers, Jeff Gleeson \u2014 who\u2019s one of the country\u2019s most esteemed \u2014 the two members of the jury and the admin staff … to quibble over $1,250 to set this principal, I don\u2019t think they have quite achieved what they wanted to achieve.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you wanted to make a stand, and a stand worth making, you had to leave the spectre of suspension on the table \u2014 at least for a while, but that was withdrawn immediately. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just wasting everybody\u2019s time. If you want to ramp the fines up, just write it into the guidelines and ramp the fines up.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cerra will face off against Melbourne this Saturday night against Melbourne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Criticism towards the AFL for their decision to send Carlton\u2019s Adam Cerra\u2019s charge for umpire contact to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,55,53,60,50,61,43,52,57,62,44,54,59,41,39,42,40,56,58,51],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-admin-staff","tag-australian-football-league","tag-contact-sanction","tag-cub-reporter","tag-end-sanction","tag-gerard-whateley","tag-headlines","tag-jeff-gleeson","tag-league-leeway","tag-mid-season-rule-change","tag-news","tag-seen-character-witness","tag-stand-worth","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tribunal-case","tag-umpire-contact","tag-veteran-broadcaster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","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=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}