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Find your frequency hereWhy Brereton is 'fed up' with the AFL Tribunal following May suspension
Nicholas Quinlan • July 26th, 2025 5:32 pm
Hawthorn legend Dermott Brereton has given a passionate plea towards AFL Tribunal Chair Jeff Gleeson following the Tribunal’s decision to suspend Melbourne’s Steven May.
This comes in relation to May, who was suspended for three games for a hit on Carlton’s Francis Evans that resulted in a concussion and a tooth falling out.
It was deemed by Gleeson that May had enough time to realise that he would not get to the ball before Evans and still made no effort to avoid harm.
“The most he could have hoped was that he would arrive at about the same time as Evans," Gleeson said in his findings.
"It was far more likely that he would reach the ball after Evans.
"As he gathered the ball, Evans had time to position his body just slightly so as to turn slightly away from May.
"This gives some indication that May had sufficient time to make some attempt to move his body in a way that minimised or avoided the impact limits.
"May made no attempt to change his path, his body position or his velocity at any time leading up to or in the contest."
Speaking on the issue, Brereton did understand why the AFL Tribunal has taken this approach but admits he is fed up with how the game has changed under Gleeson's tenure.
“He’s clearly an intelligent man (but) he is clueless to Australian Rules Football,” Brereton stated on SEN’s Crunch Time.
“We’ve been going 129 years, and suddenly, in the space of the tenure of Jeff Gleeson at the top of this tribunal is expecting players to exercise caution when they have the possibility that they are not going to get to the ball first.
“Never in the history of our game have we had this situation.
“And under Jeff Gleeson’s watch, we’ve had the words creep in of ‘duty of care'.
“I’m fed up with this. You don’t understand the game if you think you want to remain on this path.
“I get it; we’re trying to protect for head knocks, and it’s a financial position that we are trying to protect for down the track.
“But somewhere in this, give us something back. Give us something back where the competitiveness of football is; you have to be as brave as ever.
“Because I’ve looked at the vision down the ground and the final bounce before Evans regathers the ball.
“If that ball, and it is an obtuse-shaped ball, if that ball spears out at a 30-degree bounce angle as opposed to a 60-degree (angle) where Evans takes it, it gets to May first.
“No reasonable footballer can predict that.”
SEN’s Sam Edmund would also add onto Brereton’s point regarding the bounce of the ball, using Gleeson’s findings to illustrate his point.
“There is a line in Jeff Gleeson’s big finding that jumped out at me,” Edmund noted.
“And it comes to the bounce of the ball sitting up for Francis Evans.
“Jeff Gleeson writes, ‘Here, the vision shows that the second last bounce also bounces in an upright manner. So, May could have and should have observed that the next bounce may also sit up.”
"So we're predicting the bounce of the ball?"
The Demons have made the decision to appeal May’s suspension to the AFL Appeals Board to reduce the length of it.
That will take place next week.
For more of the discussion on May’s suspension, hit the play button below.
