{"id":737201,"date":"2026-06-15T02:31:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T02:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/737201\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T02:31:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T02:31:11","slug":"afl-news-2026-north-melbourne-challenging-paul-curtis-suspension-daniel-harford-calls-out-mro-tribunal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/737201\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL News 2026: North Melbourne challenging Paul Curtis suspension; Daniel Harford calls out MRO tribunal"},"content":{"rendered":"

North Melbourne<\/a> will challenge forward Paul Curtis\u2019 three-game suspension for a tackle that left West Coast\u2019s<\/a> Hamish Davis concussed on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The tackle dispossessed the Eagles youngster, who then landed awkwardly, knocking him out of the match.<\/p>\n

\"Paul<\/p>\n

Paul Curtis’ tackle concusses Hamish Davis.\u00a0Fox Footy<\/p>\n

Match Review Officer Michael Christian graded the incident as severe impact and careless conduct, leading to the three-game ban.<\/p>\n

The MRO\u2019s decision, however, has been slammed by former Hawthorn<\/a> star Daniel Harford.<\/p>\n

The former Carlton<\/a> AFLW coach believes this suspension is an example of \u201clooking for blood\u201d, saying every injury in a tackle doesn\u2019t have to result in a suspension. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think North has to challenge it,\u201d Harford told Zero Hanger\u2019s Six Points podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the system is graded, it\u2019s three weeks, and that\u2019s OK. Now we get the chance to take it the tribunal like Billy Frampton did with the Brody Mihocek tackle last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cPaul Curtis has done nothing wrong in this tackle. He\u2019s locked him up, the ball spills out, and then they fall to the ground. There was no drive, there was no secondary motion, there was no force executed. I reckon he almost protected him on the way down.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, he fell awkwardly and landed on his head and got concussed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t always have to have a villain in these scenarios. We don\u2019t have to be looking for blood because someone got hurt.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone is going to get hurt. It\u2019s the inherent nature of footy at times. It\u2019s an unfortunate accident, like last week\u2019s as well. There\u2019s no way Curtis should be serving a suspension.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curtis has been here before. In 2025, he was also controversially hit with a three-game suspension for a rough conduct tackle.<\/p>\n

That ban was ultimately upheld, and former North Melbourne great David King doesn\u2019t have much confidence things will be different this time around. <\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t think he deserved three weeks last time and he still got whacked, so what does that say for his chances this time?\u201d King told SEN on Monday. <\/p>\n

The Roos said in a statement on Monday morning that they will contest the charge on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Melbourne will challenge forward Paul Curtis\u2019 three-game suspension for a tackle that left West Coast\u2019s Hamish Davis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-737201","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\/737201","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=737201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}