FINAL BLOW

Distraught Bomber may be lost to footy

LAUDERDALE fears Jordan Roberts will be lost to Tasmanian football after he was deregistered by the TSL yesterday.

Roberts, 24, faces an indefinite ban of not less than 12 months after the TSL arbitrator denied the club’s appeal.

The Bombers said Roberts was devastated after the appeal was dismissed before being heard by the TSL arbitrator and now all their options were exhausted. Lauderdale football director Andrew McGuinness said Roberts had returned to his parents in Cairns.

“We’ve probably lost him to Tassie football, which is really sad because he’s a talented young kid,” McGuinness said.

“He’s pretty distraught. He’s gone back to Cairns to be with his family. I’ve spoken to him this morning and he’s pretty upset. We had our final training run before our game tomorrow and there were quite a few guys who were upset too.”

Roberts, 24, was suspended for two matches by the Match Review Panel for a dangerous tackle on Clarence’s Wade Wall last Saturday, pushing him past the 16-match career suspension mark and automatic deregistration.

The club fought the ban at the tribunal, lost and then lodged an appeal on Thursday only for it to be denied.

The TSL said the arbitrator considered the appeal application and found it did not fulfil any one of the four grounds for appeal — error of law, the decision was unreasonable, classification of the offence was excessive or inadequate, or the sanction was excessive or inadequate.

McGuinness said the club did not have the time nor the money to take legal action.

“When someone says there is a potential for serious injury, you’ve got to have some way of quantifying that,” he said of the suspension.

“We couldn’t understand how they had quantified that because the outcome was no injury so if the outcome was no injury how could you possibly say there was potential for injury?

“There is potential for injury in everything we do.

“They place a fair degree of importance around that and that was fairly frustrating from our perspective.”

He said the focus now returns to on-field action, starting with today’s game against Glenorchy at KGV Oval.