North Melbourne big man Tristan Xerri has been handed a three-week suspension for wiping blood on the face of Essendon skipper, Andy McGrath.
The act occurred in a moment of intense frustration for Xerri, who gave evidence around the heated exchange with Essendon players, who accused the ruckman of staging for free kicks.
"I wanted to show them that I don't do that (flopping)," Xerri said.
"I had a genuine reason that I was on the ground. I wanted to show them I was bleeding - that was my intention, (in) touching my nose."
After a lengthy deliberation, the tribunal agreed with the AFL's assertion that three matches was a fitting punishment for the act.
Tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson KC was strong in handing down the verdict, while also noting Xerri's obvious and whole remorse.
"The intentional act of wiping blood from your nose onto the face of another player is disgraceful behaviour," Gleeson said.
"We take into account the fact that Mr. Xerri pleaded guilty to the serious misconduct charge, and made no attempt to minimise the nature of his conduct. Xerri's evidence was impressive. He stated that he suffered a lapse in judgement, but that there were no excuses.
"We note that that if not for Mr. Xerri's early plea, and his candid and remorseful evidence, we may have considered a sanction of more than three weeks appropriate."
Xerri's act was deemed more severe than the two acts that set the precedent, because of the location of the smear.
In 2002, Nathan Buckley smeared blood on Cameron Ling's guernsey to have him removed from the field under the blood rule. In 2012, Jeremy Howe smeared blood on the shorts of Tom Jonas, out of pure frustration.
The prosecution argued, and the tribunal agreed, that Xerri's conduct was worse as the two preceding acts "carried no meaningful risk of the communication of a blood-borne disease."
"The appearance of the acts, while highly unsatisfactory, was not not of the same disgraceful character as (has) occurred here," Gleeson stated.
Before deliberations, the defence went into great detail when outlining six past serious misconduct offences, and more pertinently, the blood-smearing instances.
Toby Greene's $7500 fine for eye-gouging Marcus Bontempelli in the 2019 finals series was labeled as a 'lower end' sanction (as it did not necessitate a ban), while Conor McKenna's biting infraction, stemming from a 2018 incident involving Tory Dickson, was deemed the 'upper end' of the scale.
"Aside from those two outliers, each of the other (six serious misconduct) incidents received one or two match sanctions," Xerri's defence argued.
"This is not some endemic or recurrent problem.
"There is no particular need for general deterrence as an informing principle behind the question of the duration of the ban by reason of the number of incidents that are coming before this tribunal.
"The three match penalty which the AFL seeks tonight is really a significant increase in how this type of case has been sanctioned in the past, and is not in parity with that approach.
"There is no discernible change in the AFL rules or community standards that might explain or justify why there would be such an increase in penalty in incidents of this nature.
"We submit that the three matches would be excessive. It's not warranted in the particular circumstance of Tristan, given his remorse and his clear determination to do better, and it is not in parity with the approach taken to this type of incident in the past."
The AFL's representation disagreed with the bulk of those arguments.
"They're (the Buckley and Howe incidents) a long time ago. Community standards have evolved since then and the expectations of the way players should behave (have too).
"Moreover, Buckley wiped blood on another player's guernsey, and Howe rubbed blood on the other player's shorts. This conduct is a lot more severe, because of the location of where the contact was made.
"From the AFL's perspective, when you add together those evolving community standards and the differences in that previous conduct to what we're looking at here, all of those things support a three-match sanction rather than two."
The sanction means Xerri will miss the Roos' traditional Good Friday clash with an under-siege Carlton this week, as well as North Melbourne's Gather Round clash with the Brisbane Lions, and a winnable match against the Richmond Tigers.
