An on-field punch during a country football game that left a player in hospital has sparked a police investigation.<\/p>\n
The incident occurred on Sunday in Kojonup, about 260 kilometres south of Perth, during a clash between the hometown Cougars and Bridgetown Bulldogs in WA’s Lower South West Football League.<\/p>\n
Footage of the game shows a Bridgetown player running up behind a Kojonup player before punching them in the side of the head.<\/p>\n
The Kojonup player falls to the ground and the Bridgetown player runs off to continue play.<\/p>\n
A WA Police spokesperson said the victim, aged in his 20s, was threatened and assaulted while taking part in the game.<\/p>\n
“The victim lost consciousness during the incident and sustained facial injuries,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Police said the man was taken to Kojonup Hospital, where his injuries were treated.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson from the Lower South West Football League told the ABC it was aware of the incident.<\/p>\n
“The matter has been referred to the Country Football WA tribunal process and will be dealt with in accordance with the applicable rules and procedures,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
The league would not comment further, in order to “preserve the integrity and fairness of the tribunal process”.<\/p>\n
The Bridgetown Football Club said it would not comment until the league and Country Football WA finalised their investigations.<\/p>\n
The Kojonup Football Club has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n
The police spokesperson said the investigation was ongoing and that anyone with footage or other information around the incident should make contact with police.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An on-field punch during a country football game that left a player in hospital has sparked a police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,400166,106307,400172,400169,81755,400167,400170,400168,41844,85,400171,45],"class_list":["post-827139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bridgetown-bulldogs","tag-coward-punch","tag-football-assault","tag-football-tribunal","tag-king-hit","tag-kojonup-tigers","tag-lower-south-west-football-league","tag-punched-on-field","tag-south-west-news","tag-sports","tag-wa-country-football","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827139","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=827139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}