Douglas sent straight to AFL tribunal

Adelaide midfielder Richard Douglas will front the AFL tribunal on Tuesday night over a nasty bump on Callan Ward.

In an uncommon move, the match review panel did not set a potential penalty but instead directly referred Douglas’ hit on the Greater Western Sydney captain straight to the tribunal.

The referral on a rough conduct charge denies Douglas an opportunity to gain a 25 per cent discount for an early guilty plea.

His off-the-ball hit resulted in Ward being substituted out of the game with concussion.

Fremantle’s Hayden Ballatyne earned the rare feat of two reports against the same player from the same game, with kneeing and striking charges laid from the Dockers’ loss to Sydney.

Rhyce Shaw was involved in both incidents, with the feisty Docker set to miss one game with an early plea to both charges.

North Melbourne’s Scott Thompson was hit with a striking charge from an incident with Travis Cloke, but it can’t be reduced to a reprimand with an early guilty plea owing to an existing bad record.

The bad records of West Coast’s Darren Glass and St Kilda’s Adam Schneider put them in the same boat.

The veteran Eagles’ mid-air collision with Chad Wingard had the Port man taken to hospital for preliminary tests, while Schneider was charged for striking Essendon’s Mark Baguley.

Without an existing bad record, GWS’s Toby Greene can take the one-match ban on offer despite a level-three striking offence against Adelaide’s Douglas.

The Bulldogs were spared a decision on incidents involving Koby Stevens on Kane Lucas and Liam Jones on Marc Murphy when the match review panel decided their high contact were less than reportable offences.

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