Darcy Byrne-Jones will serve a one match suspension after Port Adelaide decided against taking his case to the Tribunal, ruling the 30 year old out of the club's final home game of the season against Melbourne on Saturday.
Match Review Officer Michael Christian graded the incident careless conduct, medium impact and high contact. Byrne-Jones bumped Sydney's Errol Gulden while running past the ball in the third quarter at the SCG on Saturday night. Gulden was shaken but played out the game. Sydney won by 97 points.
Accepting the grading rather than contesting it is the safer arithmetic with two rounds left. A failed challenge carries the risk of a longer penalty, and Port Adelaide has a defender it needs available for the last round rather than a hearing it might lose.
Melbourne's Kysaiah Pickett was fined $1,000 for staging. He drew a free kick in the first quarter against Fremantle after throwing his head back in a Hayden Young tackle. Melbourne won that game by four points at the MCG, one of only three losses Fremantle has taken this year.
The third finding is the one with a club attached to it. Geelong's Jack Martin was fined for careless umpire contact, the fourth such fine against a Geelong player this season. One more and the AFL imposes a $20,000 sanction on the club itself.
That is a penalty schedule that stops charging the player and starts charging the employer. The individual fines are small enough to be a rounding error against an AFL salary. The club figure is large enough to reach a football department budget, which is the point of setting it there. Whether four accidental collisions across a season are evidence of a club problem or of a busy fixture is not something the schedule asks.
In the AFLW, Carlton's Lila Keck has been offered a one match sanction for rough conduct from the first quarter of Sunday's win over St Kilda in the season opener at Marvel Stadium. Round one of a twelve round season is the cheapest week a player can give up, and clubs almost always take the offer rather than argue it.
The calculation changes at the other end of a season, where a week off can cost a player a final and challenges become worth the risk. Byrne-Jones has one home and away round left to serve his in.
Round 23 opens on Friday night with ladder leader Fremantle hosting Adelaide at Optus Stadium. Saturday has Richmond against St Kilda in the afternoon at the MCG and Hawthorn against Collingwood there at night, with Port Adelaide taking on Melbourne at Adelaide Oval. Byrne-Jones will be watching that one.
