MATCH Review Panel member Nathan Burke says Adam Cooney did "extremely well for himself" to get just one week for his heavy bump on Greater Western Sydney's Stephen Coniglio.

The MRP sent the Essendon midfielder directly to the AFL Tribunal after finding on Monday it could not reach an adequate penalty on its table of offences to apply to Cooney's big hit.

Cooney called on Gold Coast coach and former Western Bulldogs mentor Rodney Eade as a character witness, and the tribunal only gave him a one-week suspension.

Burke said the MRP had viewed the incident as worth more than that.

"We graded it as a serious incident, where in a serious incident you're looking at multiple weeks on the sidelines. In those cases sometimes it's better to give the player the opportunity to plead their case," he told Fox Sports.

"Obviously with the panel we don't get the opportunity to talk to the players, so we sent it straight to the tribunal so the player could plead his case, explain what he was doing and give him a chance to get those weeks reduced.

"Adam did extremely well for himself and got what was probably multiple weeks on the sidelines down to one week."

The Tribunal found Cooney's bump late on Coniglio in the Bombers' loss to GWS was of medium impact, not high, which cut his penalty.

The Giants' medical report showed Coniglio missed a day's training due to the contact but would not sit out any games, however Burke said "it's generous to grade it medium" because there was some form of concussion.

Cooney said after the hearing on Tuesday night that he was pleased to get "a fair result", but Burke said he thought most football watchers would have expected a heftier suspension.

"I think the Match Review Panel members thought it was more than that, but we can't take into account what the player says, his record at any stage. We just have to look at the incident, the umpire's report and the medical report. We take those three things into account," Burke said.

"But the tribunal has difference evidence than what we have, so based on their evidence they gave it two weeks and he was fortunate enough to get one week taken off for being able to plead guilty.

"If most people thought he'd miss two weeks that's probably slightly on the light side, but they would have been happy with that."