Adam Cerra fined $5,550 for umpire contact during busy night at AFL Tribunal
Under the AFL's measures announced at the start of the month, Cerra was referred directly to the tribunal after a collision with umpire Rob O'Gorman in last week's loss to Brisbane.
It was the fourth time he had been booked for the offence within two years, triggering the hearing instead of him being able to have an early guilty plea accepted.
The AFL is concerned about the growing prevalence of the collisions, which mostly happen at centre bounces.
Cerra, who watched the hearing via video link but did not give any evidence, pleaded guilty.
The 25-year-old had been backing away from Lions opponent Lachie Neale late in the second quarter when he made contact with O'Gorman.
Carlton argued Cerra should only receive a $5,000 fine, saying he likely would have contested previous charges had the direct referral for umpire contact been in place before this month.
However, the AFL pushed for the sanction to be $6,250, meaning the two parties spent more an hour debating over $1,250.
The tribunal deliberated for 30 minutes before deciding to meet almost in the middle at $5,550.
"To penalise Cerra for the higher number of umpire contacts this year would be unfair," Blues barrister Elizabeth Bateman told the panel.
"It would be punishing him for events that he has absolutely no control over."
Cerra's Carlton teammate George Hewett and Gold Coast star Matt Rowell are among other players set to face the tribunal should they be cited for umpire contact again this season.
In a busy night of disciplinary hearings, Brisbane Lions premiership player Zac Bailey failed to overturn a one-match ban for rough conduct.
The in-form Lion challenged his suspension for a high bump on Carlton defender Nick Haynes.
Brisbane's lawyer Adrian Anderson tried to have the charge downgraded from medium to low impact, meaning Bailey would be fined instead of missing this Friday night's clash with the Western Bulldogs.
Haynes was not injured in the incident and played out the match, but did touch his face to acknowledge there was high contact made.
Anderson used seven examples of bumps similar to Bailey's that were graded low.
But the tribunal disagreed and decided to accept the match review officer's grading of medium impact.
"The bump was high and had the potential to cause injury … the tribunal is not bound by previous decisions," tribunal chair Jeff Gleeson said.
The last matter for the night was North Melbourne ruckman Tristan Xerri, who failed to overturn his three-match suspension for an incident that resulted in Melbourne midfielder Tom Sparrow being concussed.
North attempted to downgrade the charge from careless conduct, which would have resulted in Xerri escaping suspension.
Despite giving evidence, with Xerri saying he reached out to Sparrow by text to check if he was OK, the 26-year-old was not successful.
Xerri, who is contention for an All-Australian berth, will sit out matches against Sydney, Geelong and St Kilda.
AAP
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ABC News
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How easy is it to trick the Australian Taxation Office?
Sam Hawley: How easy is it to trick the Australian Tax Office? Well, for fraudsters it's not hard at all and plenty have done it costing taxpayers billions of dollars that have never been recovered. Today, Angus Grigg on his Four Corners investigation into the biggest GST scam in history and how the ATO dropped the ball. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Sam Hawley: Angus, you've been hard at work looking into what's going on at the Australian Tax Office. And you've really been having a deep look into this huge GST scam. Now, this unfolded in no other than Mildura in north-west Victoria. So, take me there and tell me about local resident Sarah. Angus Grigg: Yeah. Mildura is a really beautiful town, an irrigation town on the Murray in North West Victoria. And this GST scam really took off in Mildura. And it really was circulating within a sort of population that you might say is low socioeconomic groups, people on welfare, people with addiction issues. 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And so she logged into her myGov account and first of all, claimed $15,000 and then did it a second time and got another $15,000. 'Sarah': I don't even really still understand how it went through. I was a single parent and then all of a sudden I'm a hairdresser that's getting this return put into my account with no other payments from clients or anything like that to balance it was needed. Like no proof. Angus Grigg: Now, bear in mind, the money went into the same account as her welfare payments and the money went within about 10 days without any verification, without any checks, without anyone from the tax office ringing and saying, what did you spend this money on? Do you have hairdressing qualifications? Have you hired premises? You know, she just absolutely couldn't believe how easy it was. 'Sarah': Yeah, I just couldn't believe it that it was just sitting there on my everyday access debit bank card. 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He gets that money within a couple of weeks and clearly then thinks, OK, I'm going to go for the big one. And so what he does is he lodges 46 backdated GST claims for an amount of $821,000 in GST. And the real kicker here is that for most of the period those GST claims are lodged, he's actually in jail. Sam Hawley: Oh my gosh. Angus Grigg: I know. He just couldn't make it up. Sam Hawley: What does he do with all that money? Angus Grigg: Well, of course, he spends it, right? Within a couple of weeks, the money's completely gone. He buys himself a second-hand Porsche. Somewhat endearingly, he buys his mother a house. But the really damning thing here is that the tax office notice it. Finally, someone, there's a human in the loop and they pick up the fact that, hey, maybe something's a bit wrong here. And so they ring him up and he says, oh yeah, no, it's all legitimate. I'll get my accountant to call you. The accountant never calls. They send him some emails. They write him some letters. He ignores them all. And the really damning thing here is the tax office does nothing for four months. And in that four month period, this scam absolutely explodes. So what we did is we went back and we deconstructed, if you like, the tax office's narrative. And the narrative was that this fraud took off on social media. The tax office noticed it. They cracked down really hard, really quickly, and they brought it under control. Now we sort about testing that idea. Sam Hawley: So the ATO says it did this great job. It cracked down on this fraud. But what actually happened? Because you actually had a look at that and discovered, in fact, the ATO didn't do much at all. Angus Grigg: No, exactly. So Linden Phillips does finally get caught, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the ATO. It all comes down to the smarts of a local detective in Mildura named Vanessa Power. 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