Katie Brennan loses appeal in bid to play in AFLW grand final

There was to be no last-minute reprieve for Katie Brennan, the Western Bulldogs captain, who will not lead her team out in Saturday’s AFLW grand final after a last-ditch appeal against her two-game ban was dismissed by the AFL appeals board.

The club will now consider seeking an extraordinary Supreme Court intervention after all four ground of the Bulldogs’ appeal against Tuesday night’s tribunal decision were thrown out.

A team of seven representing Brennan, including Bulldogs football director Chris Grant, women’s football chief Debbie Lee and president Peter Gordon, argued she had been the victim of sexual discrimination in being handed a ban for a sling tackle on Melbourne’s Harriet Cordner last weekend.

“Obviously, it’s a terribly disappointing decision for Katie and for her team-mates and for the whole club really,” Gordon said after the hearing. “We will consider our position.”

The team argued that the difference between how male and female players are treated in such cases was an important factor to consider. Brennan, who did not attend Thursday’s two-hour hearing at Etihad Stadium, would have received a fine and been free to play in the grand final if she was a man, they argued.

That the AFL treats its male and female players differently on the basis of their gender “is a fundamental breach in relation to the sexual discrimination act”, Jack Rush QC said during the hearing.

Rush’s wide-ranging defence touched on the Equal Opportunity Act, the AFL’s respect and responsibility policy and sexual discrimination laws.

“It is close to extraordinary that a woman in the women’s league could have a penalty of suspension when an equivalent offence in the men’s league does not amount to a suspension,” Rush said.

“By reason of the structure of the AFLW and the rules, the women are paid less and exposed to being suspended more for comparable transgressions to their male counterparts.”

AFL legal counsel Andrew Woods argued these were all matters that should have been raised during Tuesday night’s failed tribunal hearing, led by criminal lawyer Sam Norton.

Brennan’s tackle on Cordner, who was shaken but able to play out the game, was classified as low impact, high contact and careless conduct. As it was Brennan’s second classifiable offence for the season, the penalty increased from a reprimand to a one-game ban which triggered the tribunal challenge.

In the men’s competition, the two charges would still only attract a fine. The appeals board was shown vision of similar tackles involving West Coast’s Jack Redden and Essendon’s Ben Howlett last season, with both players receiving fines.

Brennan’s legal team argued that in each of those cases, the player being tackled had received less protection than Cordner because their arms were pinned.

The Bulldogs, who play Brisbane in the seasons finale at Ikon Park on Saturday afternoon, chose not to take an early guilty plea and a one-game ban, instead opting to fight the charge at Tuesday night’s tribunal. That failed, leading them to the last-chance appeal hearing.