Gaff seeks chat with Brayshaw
SUSPENDED West Coast star Andrew Gaff will soon meet Andrew Brayshaw in an attempt to make peace with the injured Fremantle player.
Gaff was suspended for eight matches by the AFL tribunal on Tuesday night — the longest ban for a single onfield act in a decade — for striking Brayshaw with a blow that broke his jaw.
Brayshaw’s father, Mark Brayshaw, expects the face-toface meeting between Gaff and his son to happen within days.
The meeting will be facilitated by another of Brayshaw’s sons, Hamish, who is a close friend of Gaff’s and a West Coast teammate.
“Thankfully Hamish is in a position to connect the two Andrews hopefully in the next day or two … and the two of them can shake hands and move on,” Mark Brayshaw told SEN radio yesterday.
“It can potentially get nasty but I’m really hopeful it won’t.”
Gaff’s suspension is the longest in the AFL since St Kilda’s Steven Baker was banned for nine games in 2008 after being found guilty of four separate offences in one game.
It’s also the equal longest suspension for a single act since Essendon’s Dean Solomon was outed for eight matches for striking Geelong’s Cameron Ling, breaking his cheekbone, in a 2008 game.
AFL great Greg Williams was among those urging Gaff to not let the incident define his career.
Williams, a dual Brownlow medallist, went through a tribunal storm in 1997 when he received a nine-game ban for pushing an umpire.