The AFL is considering whether to appeal the two-week suspension handed to Richmond’s Bachar Houli for knocking out Carlton’s Jed Lamb.

Houli was found guilty of striking Lamb in conduct deemed intentional, with high impact to the head, that left the Blues forward laid out on the MCG turf.

The AFL argued for a four-week sanction.

The tribunal jury – comprising David Neitz, Hamish McIntosh and Wayne Henwood – dismissed Houli’s argument the incident was careless instead of intentional conduct.

But they sparked outcry when they handed down the two-game sanction, citing Houli’s exemplary character.

References from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and media commentator and academic Waleed Aly were a key part of the tribunal’s penalty deliberations.

Any appeal by the AFL’s football operations manager Simon Lethlean must be lodged by 1200 (AEST) on Wednesday.

Match review panel member Nathan Burke criticised the weight the tribunal placed on the character references.

“I would probably much prefer if you just looked purely at the incident and graded it on that,” Burke said on Fox Sports News.

“If you start bringing in ‘this bloke’s a good bloke, this bloke’s not a good bloke’, who are we to actually judge who is a good bloke and who isn’t in the first place?

“And then what we end up with are disparate sentences.

“If somebody goes in next week and does exactly the same thing but doesn’t know Waleed Aly, doesn’t know the prime minister, does that mean they get three or four weeks?”

Former tribunal member Daniel Harford says Houli’s ban is “absolutely, manifestly inadequate” and rubbing him out for six weeks could be considered a fair punishment.

“You cannot have a situation with a player willingly, which was deemed by the tribunal, hitting someone … with force enough to knock someone out cold, to serve a two-week suspension,” Harford said on RSN radio on Wednesday.

“I don’t care how good a bloke is Monday to Friday.

“It’s no relevance to what he does on the field.”

The case was referred directly to the tribunal under the match review panel guidelines but the final sanction is the same as it would have been if it had been assessed as careless conduct with high impact to the head – three games down to two with an early plea.