\n The Match Review findings from Saturday’s round 23 games are in\n <\/p>\n
Aliir Aliir and Jacob van Rooyen collide during the match between Port Adelaide and Melbourne at Adelaide Oval in round 23, 2026. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
MELBOURNE’S Jacob van Rooyen has been handed a three-match ban and is set to miss two finals for his accidental hit that concussed Port Adelaide defender Aliir Aliir on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The Demons forward’s swinging arm collected Aliir in the head as he went to spoil a mark late in the second quarter of Melbourne’s 76-point win over the Power at Adelaide Oval.<\/p>\n
Aliir hit the ground and did not move for several seconds, before eventually being helped to his feet by trainers and walking from the field.<\/p>\n
However, he failed his subsequent HIA test and did not return to the field in his 200th game.<\/p>\n
The Match Review Officer graded the incident careless, high contact and severe impact, leading to a three-game ban.<\/p>\n
He will now miss the game against the Western Bulldogs in the final round on Saturday, as well as the Demons’ first two finals.<\/p>\n
Melbourne has until Monday to decide if the club will challenge the ban at the Tribunal this week.<\/p>\n
Van Rooyen booted two goals as the Demons ran out comfortable winners against Port to keep themselves entrenched in the top six with one round left and his absence is a massive blow to the Dees’ hopes of going deep in September.<\/p>\n
Speaking post-match on Saturday night, Port Adelaide coach Josh Carr said he didn’t believe there was any malice in van Rooyen’s actions.<\/p>\n
“I can see how it happens. Obviously it didn’t look great but I didn’t think it was overly malice either,” Carr said.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Collingwood’s Beau McCreery has been fined $5000 for careless umpire contact, his third such offence this season and the Magpies’ fifth offence, putting them at risk of a big fine from the AFL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Match Review findings from Saturday’s round 23 games are in Aliir Aliir and Jacob van Rooyen collide…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":857163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-857162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857162","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=857162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}