\n Joe Fonti has failed to overturn a rough conduct charge against Sydney superstar Isaac Heeney and will miss the Giants’ next match\n <\/p>\n
Joe Fonti during the round six match between Sydney and Greater Western Sydney at SCG, April 17, 2026. Picture: Getty Images<\/p>\n
GREATER Western Sydney young gun Joe Fonti will miss the clash with North Melbourne after unsuccessfully contesting his rough conduct charge against Sydney superstar Isaac Heeney.<\/p>\n
Fonti, who has played all six games this season, was given a one-match ban for a fourth-quarter incident involving Heeney in last Friday night’s Sydney derby defeat.<\/p>\n
The incident was graded as careless conduct, medium impact and high contact by Match Review Officer Michael Christian.<\/p>\n
GWS attempted to downgrade the impact from medium to low, as well as having the contact graded to body instead of the head.<\/p>\n
But after deliberating for more than 40 minutes, the AFL Tribunal upheld the charge, meaning Fonti will need to sit out this Sunday’s clash with the Kangaroos in Canberra.<\/p>\n
Fonti told the Tribunal he was trying to smother the ball, but realised he wasn’t going to be able to.<\/p>\n
Instead of smothering, Fonti said he braced for contact with Heeney, arguing the impact was against Heeney’s shoulder.<\/p>\n
In the final case at the Tribunal on Tuesday night, Gold Coast will try to overturn a one-game suspension for dashing defender John Noble.<\/p>\n
More to come<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Fonti has failed to overturn a rough conduct charge against Sydney superstar Isaac Heeney and will miss…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-621062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621062","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=621062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}