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The Steven May hearing came down to deliberating a question which has divided opinion surrounding AFL tribunal hearings for decades.
May’s legal counsel Adrian Anderson’s statement in the final minutes of his defence summarised in seven words what was being deliberated when he said of May, “there was not much more he could do.”
Steven May will miss the next three games.Credit: AFL Photos
Well, that was for the tribunal panel of two former players – Darren Gaspar and Scott Stevens – and tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson, KC, to decide.
Despite some hysteria, the trio’s decision wasn’t going to change the way the game was played, or the way the AFL now expects the game to be played.
Carlton captain Patrick Cripps seemed confused earlier in the week when he said on a podcast, “I don’t understand what we want May to do there”.
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He should understand. It’s clear.
The AFL wants players to show such a duty of care to their opponent that they assess a range of decisions they make – whether to bump, whether to change direction, whether to accelerate or decelerate, whether to brace or not – on more than the single criteria of winning the ball.
Players are also expected to factor in the likelihood of injuring their opponent or putting their opponent at serious risk of injury when making those decisions.
That is what is expected. It’s not easy. Often it’s not even fair. But that is what is expected to maintain the game’s essence while protecting combatants’ heads.
That part of football is about as secret as a Coldplay cuddle. Players should know.
Steven May collects Francis Evans.
Not even the AFL’s legal counsel Andrew Woods thought any of May’s decisions were easy. Nor did he accuse him of deliberately attempting to hurt his opponent, Carlton’s Francis Evans. He didn’t even consider what May did to be a bump. What Woods was describing was, according to Gleeson, a case of May “running through” Evans.
Woods contended May got those key decisions wrong when Carlton’s Ashton Moir overcooked a handball to Evans and put him on a collision course with May; both of them vying for a tumbling oval ball, an object as unpredictable as the US president.
Woods said “a prudent player” needed to consider when computing his actions that led to the collision such factors as the unpredictability of the bounce and the pace with which he attacked the ball as well as the line he ran.
No one, however, is lauded as the most prudent player of his time when entering the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
Tough, uncompromising perhaps. Prudent? Not so much.
The game has changed. But this decision was never going to change it.
Players have known what they need to do when faced with a similar situation to May, a tough, uncompromising player if there has ever been one, for a long time now.
The tribunal decided he made a series of decisions that led to the outcome when he could have made one that led to a different outcome.
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He could have been less certain he was going to reach the unpredictable ball first. He could have altered his approach as a result. He could have positioned his body differently, something Evans managed to do, in the final instant.
May knew what was at stake as he made each decision in a series of decisions, albeit each determined in a split second, with a goal at risk. Putting a player at risk was prioritised above the risk of conceding a goal.
As Gleeson said in his judgment, May had “a relatively long time to sum up the key features of the contest” and determined that “a reasonable player in today’s game would not have collided with Evans in the manner that happened here”.
“For Evans’ sake”, some might say on hearing May was banned, and they will be right.
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