Vickery won't do it again

What is Ty Vickery's right whack? This is now a question for the AFL tribunal when it sits on Tuesday.

The match review panel determined on Monday that Vickery's blow to the head of West Coast veteran Dean Cox was intentional, high and severe in impact, putting it into the most egregious category of offences, beyond the fixed penalties matrix, and obliging the MRP to refer it to the tribunal.

In this, Vickery's case differs from the recent high-profile cases against Hawthorn's Brian Lake and Melbourne's Jack Viney, which were referred not because of their severity, but because they were unusual and complex and needed a second opinion. There was nothing complex about Vickery's round-arm to Cox.

The AFL is happy enough for Vickery's charge to go to the tribunal, where all the arguments for and against will be aired and legally tested, and the process of arriving at a verdict will be transparent. The case has attracted a great deal of attention – not to mention prompted a little horror – and it is important that everyone can see the workings now.

Strangely enough, it is possible that Vickery at the tribunal will come away with a lesser sentence than expected. The court of public opinion would give him at least five matches, a neat figure that would end his season.

But Vickery could plead to the tribunal that he was not looking at Cox at the time, and that it is therefore a reach to say his blow was intentional, and that it should have been rated reckless, a lower price.

This would mitigate his MRP liability to four matches – three with an early plea. There are precedents for a player taking this course at the tribunal. There are fewer precedents for it succeeding.

Vickery is likely to find that the quality of the tribunal's mercy, unlike Shylock's, is rather strained. He hit Cox hard, high, and intentionally, in that he meant to hit him somewhere. Cox was concussed and put out of the game, and, in all likelihood, out of the Eagles' next game, too.

Vickery's atrocity was against a beloved West Coast player in the twilight of his career in front of the West Coast crowd, which really ought to have incurred one more activation point – for stupidity. He felt compelled to apologise to Cox, who felt compelled to accept the apology, ruefully. He and Vickery were not great mates, he said, implying that they never would be.

Vickery's belting of Cox has inflamed the feelings of fans. Always in these cases, there is a risk that the discourse will descend into a call for a penalty that fits with community expectations, a trope of talkback radio, and the court system. Four, five, six matches: who can say what is just? Some have called for 10 matches. Someone always calls for 10.

The idea that Vickery's sentence needs to be severe enough to act as a deterrent is a nonsense. So are the renewed calls for a send-off rule or a sin bin in the AFL. These matter in lower leagues, which are less policed and umpires need extra forms of control.

In the AFL, Vickery's haymaker was a throwback to a time when the game was less scrutinised and its standards looser when it came to violence. That sort of king hit has all but been eliminated from the game; at best because it is disappearing from the culture, at worst because players know they will be caught and punished.

Vickery's punch was a jolt to all sensibilities (not least Cox's) not just because of its severity, but because of its infrequency. A send-off rule would not guarantee against it happening again because it rarely happens anyway.

You can be pretty certain of one outcome: Vickery won't do it again. In that sense, whatever he gets will be by definition his right whack.