These are the facts.
Nathan Fyfe opts to bump Michael Rischitelli, who has the football. Both players clash heads, start bleeding and leave the ground for treatment. Fyfe cops two weeks from the MRP under new high contact laws.
Brent Harvey opts to bump Joel Selwood, who does not have the footy. Both players clash heads but only Selwood leaves the ground for treatment under the blood rule. Harvey is handed a one-match ban by the MRP (due to carryover points), which is subsequently overturned at the AFL tribunal.
A few things are clear here.
One is that, in hindsight, Fremantle erred by opting not to challenge Fyfe's suspension.
Another is that the AFL has some explaining to do about the interpretation of a rule, which seems to have changed markedly between round two (the Fyfe incident) and Harvey's tribunal escape on Tuesday night.
A third is that Harvey should consider himself a very, very lucky man to be playing in Friday night's preliminary final against Sydney.
As a Dockers supporter, I've so far been happy to wear Fyfe's suspension. You chose to bump with a decent amount of force (especially front-on), when there are other options and, under the rules as currently written, you take your chances.
That said, I'm also happy to see the laws of the game and their interpretation altered as required (the rider here is that there needs to be some kind of communication when this happens).
As for Harvey, if there was ever a case for a player being suspended for sheer stupidity, he would have been it.
It's impossible not to admire Boomer. He's 36 years of age but zips around like he's 21, the age he was when he played in North Melbourne's 1999 premiership.
We marvel at the longevity of Essendon's Dustin Fletcher but Harvey already has one teammate who wasn't even born at the time he was drafted by the Kangaroos and will likely have several more next season.
He's not only old enough to remember when they played state of origin matches, he won the Whitten Medal as Victoria's best player in one of them.
But earning admiration is one thing and playing smart is another. And Harvey's ability to behave himself on the field seems to be the only thing about him that may be diminishing noticeably with age.
So far this year he's bitch-slapped Scott Selwood (without penalty) and copped three weeks for misconduct against Liam Picken. He missed the first six weeks of 2013 for strikes on Adam Selwood (not sure what's with Boomer and the Selwoods) and Daniel Kerr during the 2012 finals.
He memorably sooked last year about getting pinched by Ryan Crowley, leading to a pretty weird tribunal case (basically the complete reverse of this week's one) which cost the Dockers tagger $1200 despite an apparent lack of any physical evidence.
In the Joel Selwood incident, Harvey:
a) chose to bump/block Selwood even though the Geelong skipper was nowhere near to being involved in play or even remotely threatening to become involved in play
b) chose to leave his feet to bump/block Selwood even though every AFL player would have realised this was dicing with danger for about the past five years
c) chose to bump/block Selwood front-on even though that was exactly the same technique that got Fyfe suspended earlier in the season
d) chose to bump/block Selwood even though he had just returned from a suspension, with carryover points hanging over his head.
I've had a soft spot for North Melbourne since the Krakouer brothers left Claremont for Arden Street in the early 1980s.
It would be a bit of a fairytale if the Roos beat the Swans this weekend and reached a grand final, a full 15 years after Harvey last played in one.
But if Boomer hadn't been eligible to play on Friday night, it would really have been a product of his own stupidity. Not the fault of the MRP nor Joel Selwood's propensity for bleeding.
***In rare semi-defence of the AFL judiciary: if the Fyfe and Harvey incidents are assessed side-by-side under by-the-book interpretations, the Dockers star should have got more time - as he bumped Rischitelli significantly more forcefully. In fact, if Harvey hadn't been such a very naughty boy prior to the Selwood bump, he would have been able to accept a reprimand and wouldn't have even had to take his case to the tribunal in the first place.
