Kingy

Now, St Kilda's 16-page submission last night carried 10 grounds of appeal, basically based on an error of law.

We won't get into the weeds of how legal it got last night, but essentially they stated, the tribunal's state of comfortable satisfaction was reached by unreasonable, illogical and irrational reasoning, this is their words, in the absence of any objective or otherwise reliable evidence in support of the charge, and the Saints went after St Kilda.

The Frankston pair last night, Darby Hitwell and Bailey Lambert, they said they'd colluded, that their testimony was unreliable.

And then they said, if the verdict is to be upheld, then the original suspension of nine weeks with two suspended was manifestly excessive compared to others and that it would kill Lance Collard's career.

The appeals board took less than 20 minutes.

When they came out, they found Collard, well, they re-found Collard guilty, but they cut his suspension to four weeks to suspend it.

So it's essentially a two-week suspension on top of his striking charge.

They called the nine-week ban crippling.

This is the appeals board.

And they said Collard's age, Indigenous heritage, difficult background meant that he could not cop a nine-week suspension.

And it then added...

mystifyingly, I might add, that because Hipwell was not offended by the remark, that was also a factor in his decision to downgrade the ban and pointed to the fact that Collard had been quote-unquote roughed up beforehand.

The transcript also reads in part, we observe, wait for this, we observe that football is a hard game.

It is highly competitive, particularly at its higher levels.

It is commonplace that players can employ language from time to time, which is racist, sexist, or homophobic whilst on the field.

Jeez.

And then somewhat amazingly, the Saints then gave the tribunal a whack on the way out the door.

Their statement read, despite the reduction in sanction, St Kilda remains disappointed with how the matter was assessed and believes greater consistency and clarity in the AFL's tribunal process is important moving forward.

No, they're not.

They're not.