{"id":573867,"date":"2026-03-30T09:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T09:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/573867\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T09:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T09:18:13","slug":"blood-smear-brain-fade-costs-xerri-three-afl-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/573867\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood smear ‘brain fade’ costs Xerri three AFL games"},"content":{"rendered":"

North Melbourne star Tristan Xerri would have risked a heftier AFL<\/a> ban had he not shown remorse for wiping blood on the face of Essendon captain Andrew McGrath.<\/p>\n

Xerri will miss North’s next three games after he pleaded guilty to his serious misconduct charge.<\/p>\n

The only issue at Monday’s tribunal hearing was the severity of the suspension, with the AFL wanting three games and North arguing for two.<\/p>\n

In handing down the penalty, tribunal chairman Jeff Gleeson KC said it was “disgraceful behaviour” and noted Xerri’s hand was close to McGrath’s open mouth.<\/p>\n

“The ‘look’ of the act is quite shocking,” Gleeson said.<\/p>\n

But he also noted Xerri made “no attempt whatsover” to minimise what happened and called the evidence “impressive”.<\/p>\n

Xerri was suspended for wiping blood on McGrath.\u00a0Josh Chadwick\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The tribunal said there was “some significance” to Xerri admitting in evidence that there had been blood on his hand, given that was not clear in the video footage.<\/p>\n

“If not for Mr Xerri’s early plea and his impressive, candid and remorseful evidence, we may have considered a sanction of more than three weeks as appropriate,” Gleeson said.<\/p>\n

Xerri will miss the Good Friday game against Carlton, then matches against Brisbane and Richmond.<\/p>\n

He was referred directly to the tribunal and said in evidence that the bizarre incident was a “brain fade”.<\/p>\n

As expected, Xerri threw himself at the mercy of the tribunal.<\/p>\n

The incident during Saturday night’s game overshadowed North’s 12-point win over the Bombers.<\/p>\n

Xerri was suspended for wiping blood on McGrath.\u00a0Josh Chadwick\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Monday’s hearing was held a day earlier than normal.<\/p>\n

The incident happened after the North Melbourne big man had complained to an umpire about a blood nose before kicking a goal and clashing physically with McGrath.<\/p>\n

Xerri then touched his bloody nose and wiped his hand on McGrath’s face.<\/p>\n

The ruckman called McGrath to apologise, saying in evidence that it was a good conversation, and added he was “completely owning” the mistake.<\/p>\n

Xerri said he reacted after being sledged by Essendon opponents. He had just kicked the goal from a free kick.<\/p>\n

“I was getting called a ‘weak c-word’, a ‘F’ing, flopping c-word’,” he said.<\/p>\n

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“It’s not right what I did. I’m sorry and sincerely apologise for that.<\/p>\n

“It was just a lapse in judgment. There’s no excuses, mate. It’s a poor look. I had a brain fade. I was defending myself and in that moment I had a brain fade. I should have done better.”<\/p>\n

The incident predictably attracted widespread condemnation ahead of the hearing, with AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon on Sunday saying it was “something that we don’t want to see”.<\/p>\n

North tried to draw comparisons with previous cases, where Nathan Buckley and Jeremy Howe received one-game bans for wiping blood on opponents’ uniforms.<\/p>\n

But Gleeson said those incidents were “quite significantly less serious”.<\/p>\n

Also on Monday, West Coast recruit Deven Robertson was offered a one-game ban on a rough conduct charge for his dangerous tackle on Port Adelaide star Zak Butters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Melbourne star Tristan Xerri would have risked a heftier AFL ban had he not shown remorse for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-573867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573867","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=573867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}