![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/r1643666_1055x1055_1-1.jpg&w=130&h=130&scale=crop&location=center.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n“He (Butters) is incredibly angry with the outcome. He quite rightly believes he’s been dubbed a liar,” Koch told Adelaide radio station 5AA on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Power have until noon (AEST) on Thursday to lodge an appeal.<\/p>\n
Zak Butters is not backing down to what he believes his comments were to Umpire Nick Foot.\u00a0Photo by Michael Willson\/AFL Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Butters, charged with using abusive and insulting language towards field umpire Nick Foot, was fined $1500 by the tribunal.<\/p>\n
The tribunal was “satisfied to the requisite standard” that Butters made the offending comment.<\/p>\n
“It is implausible that Mr Foot would invent the offending comment,” the tribunal’s judgment said.<\/p>\n
“It was put to him that there were several distractions and that he had misheard what Mr Butters said. We also consider that to be implausible.”<\/p>\n
Complicating the matter, the entire verbal exchange was not picked up by Foot’s microphone – though some comments before and after were.<\/p>\n
“There are many possible reasons for that, including the positioning of players to the microphone,” the tribunal said.<\/p>\n
The tribunal sided with Foot, who alleged Butters said “How much are they paying you?” after he awarded a free kick to St Kilda in Port’s 14-point loss on Sunday night.<\/p>\n
Butters vehemently denied that comment, insisting he said: “Surely that’s not a free kick.”<\/p>\n
AFLPA chief executive James Gallagher was disappointed by the outcome.<\/p>\n
“A misunderstanding about what was said on field should have been resolved in the aftermath of the match, not referred to the tribunal,” Gallagher said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“The tribunal determining not to accept all of the evidence consistent with Zak’s version of events … nor have sufficient doubt when upholding a charge is deeply concerning.”<\/p>\n
But AFL Umpires Association chief executive Rob Kerr defended Foot.<\/p>\n
“Nick Foot has never wavered from his account,” Kerr said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“His response to what he perceived was said was entirely consistent with the expectations placed on umpires charged with protecting the game’s integrity.<\/p>\n
“And he has behaved appropriately through each step of this process at the cost of significant personal discomfort, particularly with some of the online vitriol.”<\/p>\n
The flashpoint came when Foot paid a free kick to St Kilda’s Mitch Owens, prompting Port’s Ollie Wines and Butters to protest.<\/p>\n
Butters was penalised 50m and reported for abusive language by Foot.<\/p>\n
“The comment that Butters made to me was ‘How much are they paying you?'” Foot told the tribunal.<\/p>\n
Foot interpreted “they” as being “the St Kilda Football Club or someone involved with St Kilda”.<\/p>\n
“It questioned my integrity,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I’m 100 per cent adamant that those are the words Zak Butters said to me.”<\/p>\n
But Butters said he was “100 per cent sure” he did not make that remark.<\/p>\n
“I recall saying ‘surely that’s not a free kick’,” Butters told the tribunal.<\/p>\n
Essendon coach Brad Scott was among AFL identities to express unease with the case.<\/p>\n
“I’m probably like every footy fan and person waiting for an explanation about how you can take one person’s word over another … how you form a conclusion based on that is totally beyond me,” Scott told reporters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seething Port Adelaide believe star midfielder Zak Butters has been branded a liar after the AFL Tribunal found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-608417","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\/608417","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=608417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}