THE AFL will not appeal the Tribunal's decision to free Brisbane's Charlie Cameron to play this week after his dumping tackle on Jake Lever, with chief executive Andrew Dillon saying the League had thought the one-match suspension was "right".
The Match Review Officer on Friday charged Cameron with rough conduct and graded his tackle on Lever as careless conduct, medium impact and high contact, resulting in a one-game ban.
However the AFL Tribunal on Tuesday found "exceptional and compelling circumstances" to use discretion to turn the ban into a fine, citing his previous record and character assessments off the field.
Dillon, speaking on AFL.com.au's State of the Game, said the League had viewed the one-game suspension as appropriate for the action.
"First of all, he wasn't cleared. He pled guilty to the offence and was found guilty of the offence. What the Tribunal did was use a discretion they have in exceptional and compelling circumstances to make a call that's outside the Tribunal framework and they did that," Dillon said.
"There were, from the Tribunal chair, there were a number of compelling circumstances and they were first of all that he pled guilty, second of all the number of games he's played without suspension, thirdly that the player didn't suffer an injury and the fourth one was that it was at the lower end of careless.
"There were a number of circumstances that went into that. What I will say from an AFL point of view is I was really happy with the way the MRO graded it with a one-match suspension and that was what we were hoping the outcome would be."
The AFL on Wednesday weighed up appealing the verdict but has decided against it, although it will review the process later in the year.
"No, we won't appeal. We have had a look at that and we think the discretion was there for the Tribunal to use. But as I said, the MRO graded it a one-match suspension and that's where we thought the right result would have been," he said.
"We'll look at the Tribunal and the way we go for the rest of the year but as we do at the end of every year we'll review our Tribunal guidelines."
Dillon said the AFL would assess whether character references were worthy of any impact on Tribunal judgments in the future.
"I think that's one of the things we would look at towards the end of the year," he said.
