Mornings with Mark Duffield - Full Podcast - Wednesday 23.09.2026

SPEAKER_2 (0:11)

This is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SENWA.

Mark Duffield (0:17)

Hello everybody, and welcome to the SENWA Radio Studio. We're out here at Optus Stadium, Wednesday morning in Perth, 17.6 degrees outside at the moment, building to a top of 21 degrees later in the day.

Mostly sunny. And we're here thanks to Beaumont Homes, award-winning design, built to be loved forever. Made in WA, for WA. This is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SENWA.

So, as it stands, Brisbane champion, Lockie Neal, remains suspended for Saturday's grand final against Fremantle. His one-match ban was upheld after an extraordinary four-and-a-half-hour tribunal hearing, in which the tribunal took about two-and-a-quarter hours deliberating on the case before handing down their verdict. Now, we're waiting to hear if the Lions take one last throw at the Stumps by taking this to the Appeals Tribunal, which would probably happen on Thursday night, if they elect to do so.

And I know that several listeners yesterday were blaming the media for Neil being suspended. So before we get into the nitty-gritty of the case, let's just point out a couple of things. The media did not bring this to the AFL's attention. The AFL found it themselves and quite frankly, many in the media, including me, were blindsided and shocked by the news which broke on Sunday morning that Neil was facing the ban. And they were also blindsided and shocked because they couldn't believe that a player of Neil's experience would run up to an unsuspecting opponent and hit him in the stomach, knowing that there are cameras everywhere at every AFL match, let alone a preliminary final at the MCG. And he should have also known that an edict from Greg Swan, that players who punched opponents in the stomach were facing a one-match ban and that since then, nine players this year had already found out the hard way that the AFL was standing firm on the crackdown. Now, not surprisingly, once the AFL found the footage, they had little option but to offer Neil the one-match ban. Equally, not surprisingly, the Lions took only minutes to declare they would be challenging the ban. More surprisingly, we saw two hours of evidence followed by a further two hours of the Tribunal mulling over the evidence before we got an outcome. And you have to say that the reason cases like this take so long is that the defendant doesn't have to pick one story and stick to it. He can throw multiple theories at the wall in the hope that any one of them sticks. So Plan A for Neil was that this was not a strike, that it was a body check or bump, that he hit Ginevans shoulder first and that it was the force of the bump that knocked Ginevans to the ground. But there is no video footage, grainy footage yes, but footage nonetheless, sorry, there is video footage, grainy footage yes, but footage nonetheless, that shows Neil swinging his left arm with his elbow bent in a striking pose and his fist appearing to be clenched, although the Tribunal said they couldn't conclusively without reasonable doubt say that it was clenched at Ginevans with Ginevans bracing as if absorbing a blow to the stomach, not a bump to the shoulder. So, Plan A failed. Plan B was OK, so maybe this was a strike, but look at Ginevans, he goes to ground, then he gets up pretty quickly and he runs off. You have graded this contact medium, but it should be graded as low, which gets the penalty down to a fine. But if you intentionally strike a player, the contact unless negligible is going to be graded as medium and it is clear from the video that the force of the strike, while not high, was clearly greater than negligible, so therefore medium. So much for Plan B.

So Plan C was okay. So this was a strike and the force of the blow was more than low. But Lockie Neal is a dual Brownlow medalist who has played 320 games of AFL footy and never been suspended. So cue the exceptional and compelling circumstances clause. The problem with Plan C is that while Scott Pendlebury had used exceptional and compelling circumstances to beat a ban earlier this year, with a similar argument to the one that Neal tried, Pendlebury's incident was a split second decision that went wrong in play, not an intentional strike off the ball. It was pointed out that the exceptional and compelling clause had never been used to exonerate a player found guilty of an intentional strike. And this was not Neal's first strike. Tribunal Chairman Jeff Gleeson pointed out that Neal has been found guilty of striking three times previous to this, so this made it four, just just that before now, he was never suspended. He was always fined. And if you were looking for precedence, since Greg Swan's edict, as I said, nine players had been given bans for punching players in the stomach. So for those who reckon the media are out to get players like Neal suspended, no, we're not. After doing this for 30 years, I'm not going to be surprised whether Neal plays in the grand final or not. But the arguments against his suspension center on the fact that he's going to miss a grand final. In other words, the penalty is too big because the moment is too big. And that is the same logic that Hawthorne supporters used when they squealed about the decision against Jarman Impey for holding the ball on Saturday. Whatever the rules are, the penalty was too big, even if the decision was right, which of course is a nonsense. The only rules that are worth their weight are the ones you're willing to enforce even when there is a big price to pay.