North Melbourne veteran Brent Harvey failed to overturn a striking suspension at the AFL Appeals Board, confirming he will miss the first six games next season.

Harvey challenged the guilty verdict at last week’s tribunal hearing for striking West Coast opponent Adam Selwood.

He received a two-match ban for that offence.

Last week he also failed to downgrade another striking charge involving Eagles onballer Daniel Kerr and that resulted in a four-match ban.

After Tuesday’s appeals hearing, Harvey maintained his innocence and said he had no second thoughts about challenging the two cases.

“I don’t regret appealing, because I thought we needed to do it,” he said.

“When you’re innocent, you don’t really want to cop what they served up.”

Harvey could have taken a total suspension of four weeks had not taken the two cases to the tribunal.

After a 50-minute appeals hearing dominated by legal argument, the three-man appeals jury deliberated for 35 minutes on Tuesday night before announcing they had dismissed Harvey’s case.

Board chairman Peter O’Callaghan QC said the panel would publish the reasons for their verdict “at a later date”.

Harvey said he had been upbeat about his chances of a successful appeal.

“I was very confident – it’s just disappointing, I guess, it’s the same situation as last week,” he said.

“I’m going to be missing six weeks of the AFL season in 2013.

Since the current AFL tribunal system was introduced in 2005, Collingwood captain Nick Maxwell has made the only successful appeal out of 15 attempts.

Maxwell managed to overturn his four-week suspension for rough conduct against West Coast opponent Patrick McGinnity in a 2009 pre-season match.

North Melbourne advocate Sam Horgan SC repeated their argument at the start of last week’s tribunal hearing, that the case should not have proceeded because there was insufficient evidence.

The Kangaroos also argued in the appeal that there was an error of law, because they were unable to cross-examine evidence from Selwood.

But AFL legal counsel Andrew Tinney SC said North had the chance last week to cross-examine Selwood if they wanted.

“The power was there for either side to seek to call player Selwood,” he argued.

Unlike most modern AFL tribunal cases, there was minimal video footage of the Harvey-Selwood incident and the down-the-ground camera angle was also inconclusive.

An AFL investigator interviewed Selwood and his statement was used as evidence during the tribunal hearing.

Harvey gave evidence at last week’s hearing, but was not called during the appeal.

Earlier on Tuesday, Fremantle defender Alex Silvagni accepted his one-match ban for headbutting Adelaide’s Jared Petrenko.

Silvagni will also serve his suspension at the start of next season.