Racing
League
Rugby
Cricket
Golf
Motorsport
Combat Sports
Football
Netball
Basketball
Other Sports
Sport Nation
Find your frequency hereWhateley: The problem with the May verdict
Gerard Whateley • July 24th, 2025 11:46 am
The next time you are asked who’s the player you’d build a team around, forget about Sam Darcy and Harley Reid.
Go for the 'Reasonable Player' the Tribunal has invented – the all-knowing, all-seeing personification of perfection from a utopian world.
He is football’s equivalent of Mr Anderson in The Matrix.
He sees the world in slow motion and anticipates what’s happening two and three moves ahead.
He doesn’t exist but he casts a big shadow.
It’s not surprising Steven May was suspended for three matches last night.
It was going to be a high bar to achieve a not guilty verdict.
We demonstrated yesterday that you could watch the vision and get it to fit your view whether May should be banned or exonerated.
But the hearing itself and the verdict… that was surprising.
I’ve been covering the Tribunal for 26 years from my days as a cub reporter at Channel 10.
That was about as weak a case as I’ve seen made by the prosecution.
Yet it was enough to trigger a guilty verdict and a finding which I’d best describe as a 933-word creative writing exercise.
The AFL conceded May did not bump Francis Evans – so you can discount the blazing headlines about May Day for the Bump.
There was no bump here.
The AFL’s case swung on the idea May knew he wasn’t getting to the ball first and that he should have understood the bounce of the ball can be unpredictable.
That was an esoteric notion if ever you’ve heard one.
But Tribunal Chairman Jeff Gleeson took that idea and instigated a game of follow the bouncing ball.
“Much emphasis was placed on the fact that the last of the four times that the ball bounced, it did so in a more upright manner," said Gleeson.
"The vision shows that the second last bounce also bounces in an upright manner, so May could and should have observed that the next bounce may well also sit up."
If this Reasonable Player were real St Kilda would’ve broken the premiership drought in 2010. Stephen Milne would have understood the way the ball was going to bounce and lurched forward to gather rather than have it bounce through for a behind.
If the Reasonable Player was a cricketer Daryll Cullinan would have been prolific on the international stage. He would have seen Shane Warne’s flipper and known exactly how to counter its trajectory.
But that’s not the reality of sport and that’s the problem with last night’s verdict.
All this ignored the fact May was surprised he didn’t get the ball and dismissed Evans' concession that it was line ball who would get there first.
So the two players who made the running were uncertain of the outcome.
But this Reasonable Player knew all along how it was going to pan out.
In the Alex Pearce case the Tribunal endorsed the Fremantle captain’s attempt to mark as entirely realistic.
May was lectured that when he changed direction a reasonable player would have realised that it was highly likely that Evans would reach the ball before May did.
Is that supported by evidence or is that just an opinion?
Rubbing May out for three weeks would have been understandable and justifiable if the Tribunal had seen it as David King did – May knew exactly what he was doing, he sought the contact, he picked Evans off and it’s an action from a bygone era.
But that’s not what happened.
I would hope this is taken to appeal and the idea of the Reasonable Player is struck down.
The creation of a perfect player from a utopian world is not a standard the actual players should be held to.
Steven May’s three-match suspension is not a surprise… the manner in which it was arrived at is.
