And thats all well and good. But the AFL should not take that into consideration because its irrelevant under the grading system. Previous appeals **** dudes over because they try reduce gradings. Now all they need to do is say that they are good dudes and hey presto, off ya go son.
This is very, very wrong, Not what you are saying, what the tribunal has done. An absolute disaster.
Michael Tovey QC (a very very good criminal law barrister) has argued fo Houli: "Character can be used in two ways: evidence of good character can go to the credibility of Houli, and it goes directly to the understanding of whether Houli is the sort of person likely to make that sort of contact. It can also affect penalty."
This is crap. It applies very remotely in a criminal court of law (and is generally irrelevant), but not in an AFL tribunal. We have extensive video evidence. We know that football is played at a high pace and that players make split second decisions, some of them stupid and regrettable. It means that we need to be extremely careful about pre-judging incidents based on character - while a player prone to a rush of blood to the head (think Barry Hall) might be more likely to do something stupid than a player who is usually as fair as the day is long (think Barry Cable), that doesn't mean that one could accidentally clock someone while the other set out to knock someone's lights out. By looking at the character of the person to try and figure that out, we mislead ourselves from what is actually before our very eyes on the video tape.
We have more than enough evidence in the form of video from all angles, umpires as eye witnesses and the like to figure out what a player most likely intended in the heat of the moment without having to revert to who the player would like to believe they are as a person, or - even less relevantly - what people who have interacted with them off the football field might think of them.
It would be incorrect enough if the tribunal was to take into account a player's past history as a fair ball player in trying to figure out what he intended in the heat of the moment - hell if the tribunal went down that path then it would have either acquitted Judd or lessened his penalty for his chicken wing on Patch - but even worse if the tribunal takes into account what people think of a player off the field. On that logic, in the 90s Arch - a bloke who walked a bloody fine line every time he went out on the field and sometimes crossed that line - would have walked out of the tribunal every time smelling like roses due to the fact that he is unanimously regarding as an absolutely ripping bloke. As much as we'd all have loved that to happen, we'd also know that there were times Arch crossed the line and deserved a week or two. Why should he be able to get a leave pass because a couple of people in high places tell a sob story about good a bloke he is? Should North have been getting Pagan to give character evidence about how far he has come since his youth?
What about Lindsay? Next time he is before the tribunal should be parading a wall of people who can attest to his character development and all the good work he has been doing in the indigenous community? Should that mean he gets a week or two less than everyone else for clocking someone?
On the other side of the ledger, does the prosecution start wheeling out character evidence? Why shouldn't the AFL prosecution effectively re-run the Daw rape case or the Dumont burglary case the next time those two appear before the tribunal, to show they are bad people capable of doing bad things on a football field or worthy of a greater suspension? Or Martin's known association with shady characters (ie his dad)? Doesn't the character issue go both ways?
Ross Howie is a retired County Court judge. When he sits on the AFL tribunal, he should have a better feel for the difference between a court of law and a sporting tribunal. There are similarities, but there are significant differences. He should be more attuned to those differences than he has shown here. He should have ruled the Turnbull and Aly evidence irrelevant from the outset. It creates a precedent that is going to haunt the tribunal. When the next player rolls out a bunch of character references (probably not being able to call upon the prime minister though) and the tribunal knocks them back (which I bet they will), imagine the cries of hypocrisy. Already I bet there will be noises about "social engineering" and "political correctness" and "the Left" and all sorts of garbage that really just could have been avoided with a little more care and thought.
As a side note: I don't in any way blame Houli or his legal counsel for running an argument based around his character, or calling on character references from people in high places (putting aside the curious inference that the opinion of the prime minister about the character of a person carries any more weight than the opinion of you or me. Since when did a peron's station in life make them any better a judge of character?) - their goal is to get Houli the best outcome in any way possible. I blame the tribunal, Howie in particular as its chairperson, for not seeing the danger in going down that path and allowing that precedent to be created.