MELBOURNE has accepted the MRP suspensions handed to Jordan Lewis and Jesse Hogan, with the Demons declaring the star pair's actions would not be tolerated.
Lewis will miss the next three matches after striking Carlton young gun Patrick Cripps, the force from the contact leaving the best and fairest winner with a fractured jaw and in doubt for this week's clash against Essendon.
Hogan will serve a two-match ban for striking Blues defender Sam Rowe, meaning he will miss games against Geelong and Fremantle.
Bernie Vince is set to replace Lewis in the Melbourne side for this week's match against Geelong, after he served a one-match suspension for striking in round two.
Senior leader Tom McDonald revealed both Lewis and Hogan apologised directly to their teammates on Monday.
"The group has already stated yesterday that it's not on and it can't happen again," McDonald said.
"This is going to cost the team pretty badly, three weeks for Jordan and two weeks for Jesse.
"It's a big price to pay and it hurts the rest of the team."
Demons football manager Josh Mahoney said the evidence was stacked heavily against both Lewis and Hogan.
"After going through the Match Review Panel classification and looking at the medical reports, we've decided that we’re going to accept both the early guilty pleas," Mahoney told the club's website.
"We've spoken to our players about the three of them being involved in three incidents over the last two weeks – three off the ball incidents. We want to be known as a competitive, contested team and these incidents don’t in any way reflect how we want to be viewed.
"The MRP grading and the medical reports make it very difficult to challenge any element of the charges, so we’ll be accepting the early pleas for both cases."
McDonald said there was a fine line between being aggressive at the man and the ball and overstepping the mark.
"There's no-one saying that we should line up guys off the ball or anything like that," McDonald said.
"We talk about using the 'intensity can' and putting into that every week and that's part of the game.
"That's not part of the game what happened on the weekend and that's let us down."
