Lions anger at Hipwood claims
Push into ump ‘wasn’t intentional’, says Brisbane
BRISBANE has reacted angrily to suggestions Eric Hipwood intentionally pushed opponent Ryan Gardner into an umpire as the club forms a defence to exonerate their star forward at the tribunal.
The Lions will use previous examples showing the patterns run by key forwards to attempt to explain why Hipwood pushed his opponent into umpire Jacob Mollison.
Hipwood has been sent straight to the tribunal in an ungraded case given AFL football boss Andrew Dillon and MRO supremo Michael
Christian did not believe the match review guidelines fitted the potential punishment of a fine.
But Brisbane football boss Danny Daly said on Monday he was frustrated by commentary that Hipwood had intentionally pushed Gardner into an umpire.
News Corp revealed on Friday night Hipwood would be sent straight to the tribunal with Kangaroos premiership player David King among those who believed the athletic tall forward should be suspended.
Fox Footy expert Garry Lyon also believes handing Hipwood a week would uphold the respect to umpires the AFL is attempting to strengthen in the game.
“It’s just a matter of the club and advocate getting to work and putting a case forward to get Eric off,” Daly told Brisbane’s Radio TAB Breakfast program.
“The one thing I will say is there are a lot of opinions around but one thing about Eric’s character is he is a fantastic young man and that is not something he would do intentionally.
“So when I hear people talking about it being intentional I get a bit frustrated because we know what Eric is about.”
Down-the-ground vision showed Gardner attempting to check Hipwood’s run and moving into his path, with the Lions forward then shoving him forcefully into the umpire.
The Lions believe the running pattern is one many key forwards attempt as they try to get separation from their opponent.
“Most of the weekend we spent looking into a lot of vision from other games about patterns forwards run to show that this isn’t a one-off.
“Players do these patterns and defenders do block them,” Daly said.
“We are putting a case together to show what happened in this instance is a normal forward line pattern. It is just unfortunate it happened to be the case that there was an umpire.
“I am not surprised it’s got no grading. It is one of those incidents that probably hasn’t occurred in terms of a player being pushed into an umpire and both going to ground.
“We understand that this is a process in place with the MRO, that they couldn’t grade it careless or intentional.”