Geelong superstar has been found guilty at the AFL tribunal after he was charged with rough conduct for bumping former Adelaide teammate Jake Kelly which left him unconscious.
Dangerfield has been suspended for three weeks and is no longer in contention for the Brownlow Medal.
The 30-year-old’s actions were assessed by match review officer Michael Christian as careless conduct, severe impact and high contact.
Dangerfield’s lawyer argued the impact was high but not severe. But he failed to convince the jury of Richard Loveridge, Paul Williams and Jason Johnson.
Kelly suffered a concussion and a broken nose when Dangerfield chose to bump and clashed heads with his former housemate, as you can watch in the video above.
Crows club doctor Marc Cesana’s medical report assessed Kelly suffered significant loss of consciousness and a broken nose, and he’ll miss at least three days of training and one match.
AFL representative Jeff Gleeson argued the classification of severe was correct and that six matters should be taken into consideration.
Gleeson said Dangerfield pushed towards Kelly and it was not a reflex motion because his feet lifted off the ground, and suggested the injuries could have been worse.
“At that point of impact it was relatively uncontrolled,” he said.
Ben Ihle, acting for Dangerfield, countered his client tucked his elbow, he remained low, he tried to avoid making head high contact with his “orthodox, good technique”.
“Mr Dangerfield accepts that in the modern game when a player bumps another player they accept responsibility for the consequences,” Ihle said.
“He accepts there was accidental and incidental contact between their heads.
“(But) this is not a bump to the head case, this is a bump to the body which results in incidental or accidental head contact.”
The hearing then took a strange twist when Ihle read out different definitions of severe, even quoting Siri who defines the word as “very great, intense.”
The panel took 20 minutes to reach their verdict.
Adelaide captain Rory Sloane said his friend and former teammate Dangerfield was “incredibly unlucky” before the tribunal hearing began.