To add another twist to a season of tribunal adventure and misadventure, North Melbourne veteran Brent Harvey pleaded half-guilty to misconduct. Argued to an absurdly fine point, this might have given rise to a penalty of, say, one-and-a-half matches instead of three, and that Harvey would resume at half-time in round 23. The machinations of the AFL's judiciary remain as opaque as ever, despite its several overhauls, and so it can almost be said that stranger things have happened.
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Of course, it didn't. Harvey pleaded guilty to one aspect of the charge, namely that he threw Liam Picken to the ground, and was found guilty of the second, that he applied unnecessary force to Picken's neck once he was there, and copped a full whack of three matches. There went one final, for all anyone knows the only one North will play this season.
Harvey's defence was what is known as a "contested plea", and so it became a night of considering fractions and splitting hairs. Guilty, but not wholly guilty. The action itself: "shrug", "flip", "throw" or "roll"; everyone had a different verb for it. Elbow to Picken's neck, or forearm, or a bit of both? Too instantaneous a moment for Harvey to have done otherwise, or just long enough for him to know what he was doing?
Loading for previous offences (40 per cent) and/or discount for pleading a little bit guilty (25 per cent). Because this was a tribunal matter, these were notional anyway. As Harvey's advocate, Justin Hannebery, said, we were back in the times of intuitive verdicts. So, two matches, or three, or four?
Even about the verdict, there was an arbitrarily fine line. That's 341 points, said Wayne Henwood, David Neitz and David Pittman, somewhat mysteriously. All were estimable footballers, but none ever would have had to be that pinpoint in their onfield work.
Only one element of the hearing and its outcome brooked no argument. When foreman Henwood delivered the verdict, Harvey turned to North officials at the back of the room and spread his arms as if to ask: "What the hell?" It was not because he didn't understand, but because he did, all too well. There was in this gesture no element of theatre, as Harvey sometimes affects on the field. This hurt, as surely any forearm to the neck.
Harvey has sympathy to a particular extent, mentioned by him in passing while defending himself. Earlier this season, Hawthorn defender Brian Lake copped a four-week suspension for an unseemly and unsightly attack on the neck of Harvey's teammate, Drew Petrie. Harvey said this was somewhere in the back of his mind as he sought to extricate himself from Picken's hold on his jumper, which was dragging him down to a point where he could only brace himself on his forearm. Hence the report. On Monday night, Harvey acknowledged that the result was at least a bad look.
As much as one can second-guess the tribunal's Byzantine workings, this was also in its collective mind. AFL counsel Jeff Gleeson said Harvey's action created a risk of injury, but was "not the full jiu-jitsu throw", and was not necessarily one that brought the game into disrepute. Seemingly, the tribunal rejected that notion. Multiplied out, it arrived at three matches, a whole and unambiguous number and for Harvey, horrifying.
