One shove, forty years gone - and a valid-reason ruling every HR team should read
A long-serving AFL umpires coach lost his unfair dismissal appeal on July 30, 2026, after a physical run-in caught on CCTV.
The Australian Football League dismissed the coach for misconduct in May 2025 after an altercation with a member of the public who came onto a closed training ground. He challenged the dismissal, lost at first instance, appealed, and a Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission has now dismissed that appeal as well.
The incident lasted only minutes. On April 8, 2025, the coach was supervising umpire training at North Sydney Oval, a ground the AFL had booked and closed to the public. A member of the public, anonymised in the decision, was running laps. The coach told him the ground was private and asked him to leave. The man refused and kept trying to run. For about two and a half minutes, the coach moved from side to side to block his path.
It then turned physical. The coach's account, which the Deputy President accepted for the moment the camera did not capture, was that the man grabbed his shoulder first. What the CCTV showed next was harder for the coach. The Deputy President found he grabbed the man's shirt and pushed and dragged him roughly 40 metres toward a gate, at one point letting go, pushing the man backwards and squaring up with his fists partially raised. Two AFL staff stepped in, walked the man off the field, and apologised to him. The man later complained...
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