Racing
League
Rugby
Cricket
Golf
Motorsport
Combat Sports
Football
Netball
Basketball
Other Sports
Sport Nation
Live sport on SN this weekendHealy slams AFL for giving Greene a ‘get of jail free card’ after kneeing Pies defender
Gerard Healy • March 12th, 2025 2:30 pm
There are times when something happens on the football field, and you plug that action into the MRO matrix and it comes up with a fine, but you instinctively know or should know that that's just not right.
Michael Christian should have the capacity and the common sense to know that if the table just doesn't look right, it doesn't pass the sniff test, send it to the Tribunal… no matter how many weeks the table spits out.
Such a case happened on the weekend, although I must admit I missed it until watching On The Couch on Monday night.
There they were discussing the Toby Greene incident and showed the footage where he lifted his knee into Reef McInnes’ stomach, which impacted him physically for a period of time.
While the Giant was fined $10,000, I was watching thinking, ‘How did this not gather more serious attention?’.
I was really pleased to see that Jordan Lewis chose to step up into the silence and speak up with authority, clarity and simplicity, saying, ‘That was an action that simply required a suspension’.
Lewis is a rising star in my view, an independent and courageous commentator, who was happy to sing outside the accepted chorus. It's one of the reasons he's got such a bright future.
As Nathan Buckley said, it probably dismisses the ‘Toby Tax’ once and for all, for the nonsense that it always was.
As Lewis said, Greene should have been suspended for one, and when probed, probably two weeks, as a statement of what's acceptable and what's not acceptable on the field.
It again focuses our attention on the worrying standards that the AFL football department is condoning so far this year. With the aggressive pushes in the back causing collisions in packs, the obvious standout so far. Add that to Toby Greene's incident last weekend.
Its swings and roundabouts, I accept at times, but in a case like this, wiser heads should have prevailed and followed the guidance and instinctive reaction of Jordan Lewis. His immediate reaction was suspension.
But the Laura Kane-Michael Christian cohort balked and let the game down in doing so.
If the game hasn't got overriding powers to send an incident to the Tribunal that warrants further examination, then they need to immediately give themselves that power.
In my view, the Giants and Toby Greene got a get-out-of-jail-free card to continue their great start to the season.
