St Kilda great Nick Riewoldt thinks Zak Butters will win his AFL tribunal appeal based purely on the “clown show” process that found him guilty in the first place.
Butters was fined $1500 after being found guilty on Tuesday night of umpire abuse directed towards umpire Nick Foot during Port Adelaide’s loss to St Kilda the previous Sunday night.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: AFL tribunal member attends hearing while driving
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That’s despite Butters remaining adamant he was innocent, and that he did did not ask Foot, “How much are they paying you?” after the whistleblower awarded a free kick to the Saints at a critical point of Sunday’s game.
Butters insists he said, “How is that a free kick?”, but the tribunal didn’t see it that way, based on the evidence they heard.
The three-person panel — made up of Renee Enborn KC, Darren Gaspar and Jason Johnson — found that on the balance of probabilities, Butters did say what Foot claimed.
Although not before a strange sidenote to the hearing, where the tribunal chair lost visibility on Johnson before the former Essendon champion re-emerged in his car moments later.
With about 20 minutes to go in the hearing, as both parties gave their final submissions, Johnson went missing very briefly, prompting the tribunal chair to ask where he’d gone.
He soon returned, explaining that he had transferred his connection to the meeting from his computer to his phone.
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Former Essendon champion Jason Johnson is an AFL tribunal panellist. Credit: Getty
Johnson was then seen behind the wheel of a car. It’s understood Johnson had a prior engagement he had to get to.
Riewoldt said Butters and Port Adelaide should be filthy with the AFL.
“If I’m Zak Butters and my reputation is on the line, and one of the people tasked with delivering the verdict — so, listening to all the testimonies and hearing all the facts — and one of those people is jumping off the call and then back on the call and being distracted while driving, I am absolutely furious and I have no doubt that he will win on appeal, based on that alone,” he told The Agenda Setters on Wednesday night,
“That is a clown show, like, that is mind-boggling that that’s where we’re at; that the AFL, an organisation who are obsessed with optics, have no problem with a tribunal member being on Zoom while driving a car while a player’s reputation (is at stake).
“You wouldn’t hear that in a country league, would you?”
Mitch Cleary said the AFL’s view was that Johnson’s antics weren’t ideal, but that they also weren’t a hanging offence.
“I spoke to the AFL about this today and they’re confident that Jason Johnson handled it fine,” Cleary said.
“They’ve had a quick word to him, but they won’t be changing the rules.
“They said it wasn’t ideal, but they’re not going to come down with a sledgehammer on the back of this.”
Asked about the fiasco on Adelaide radio on Wednesday, Power president David Koch said it wasn’t good enough.
“At least bring the professionalism that we have across the entire league into such an important decision-making group,” he said.
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