Lachie Neale’s undoing revealed after AFL tribunal rejects his ‘inconsistent’ evidence

The hard part was whether to apply the ‘exceptional and compelling clause’.

As tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson KC noted at the end of a sensational four-and-a-half hour hearing on Tuesday night : “There are matters trending both ways on this issue.”

Gleeson and his fellow tribunal members, former players Darren Gaspar and Scott Stevens, decided not to enact the clause.

And Brisbane star Neale remains banned for the grand final against Fremantle.

Neale insisted he didn’t strike Hawthorn’s Jack Ginnivan during last Saturday night’s preliminary final.

“It was more a bump or body-check,” the dual Brownlow medallist said, adding Ginnivan “might have taken a bit of a dive to get a free kick”.

“We have listened carefully to Mr Neale’s evidence but we find it was inconsistent in key respects with what we saw on the video,” Gleeson said.

Neale maintained his shoulder and chest made contact with Ginnivan; the tribunal found it was “a forceful blow delivered with a swinging arm and an open hand”.

The only video footage of the incident was long-range and, when enhanced, remained grainy — regardless of how many times it was played frame-by-painstaking-frame.

“It is the case that there is no single frame in the vision that shows Neale’s hand or lower arm making contact with Ginnivan’s abdomen,” Gleeson said.

“When played at normal speed, it appears clear to us that this was, to use the common vernacular, a strike to the guts.

“We are mindful of the significant consequences for Neale of this finding of intentional strike. But we find the evidence to be cogent.”

Was using the exceptional and compelling circumstances clause justified to downgrade Neale’s penalty from a ban to a fine and therefore clear him to play in the grand final?

Introduced this year, the clause had been deployed once: to downgrade a one-game ban to Collingwood legend and the AFL’s games record-holder Scott Pendlebury, to a fine.