Adelaide star Izak Rankine is facing a sizeable suspension, after an off-the-ball bump left Brisbane defender Brandon Starcevich with a concussion early in the Crows’ loss to the Lions at the Gabba.
Possibly in response to Starcevich’s tagging role on him, Rankine lined up his unsuspecting opponent late in the first quarter of the match, with the pair’s heads clashing.
Play was halted for several minutes as Starcevich was attended to by Lions medical staff, with the 24-year old subsequently failing a concussion test that ruled him out of both the rest of the match and the Lions’ Round 18 clash with West Coast under AFL protocols.
Rankine was treated for a cut to the head sustained in the bump, but returned shortly after to play out the match; however, the nature of the incident and the damage delivered is set to see him cop a hefty ban from either Match Review Officer Michael Christian, or, should the hit be graded as having ‘severe’ impact, the AFL Tribunal, with the latter carrying a minimum four-match ban should he be found guilty.
Speaking on Fox Footy’s First Crack, former player and football analyst David King was scathing of Rankine’s hit.
“This is crap from Izak Rankine,” he said.
“He’s picked off a defenceless player, when he knows he’s completely vulnerable, sets himself, and just takes him out.
“Now he doesn’t mean to get him in the head, but he’s going to hurt him… he knows he’s not looking, he sights him, and flushes him.
“Everyone’s going to say ‘oh, nah, nah, this is just a normal act, a normal bump, normal carry-on on your way back to position, but not at that force. Not for me.”
King compared the hit unfavourably to Luke Parker’s VFL bump on Frankston’s Josh Smith that resulted in serious facial injuries and a concussion, resulting in a five-match ban for the Sydney veteran – but said at least Parker didn’t intend to hurt Smith.
“Luke Parker didn’t mean to cause the damage that he went to cause: he braced, he went past the ball, all those sorts of things,” he said.
“This one here, the first port of call is to hurt your opponent.
“This is a guy who understands the nuances of the game better than anyone. I could put him into a stoppage with 20 blokes around him, and he can navigate his way through, and you’re telling me he doesn’t know what he’s doing here, 1v1, in 30 metres of space when the play is not even in motion?
“I’m really disappointed in this action, and I think the AFL should, and will, come down hard.”
King, however, believes a five-match ban to match Parker’s is unlikely, given Starcevich was only concussed by the hit and not further damaged.
“If you’re going on intent, then I think it’s in the same area [of the Parker suspension],” he said.
“But if you’re just going on the outcome, which is where we’ve gone to – the outcome in the Parker case was severe, and the young man spent some time in hospital and clearly missed a fair bit of work – this is not that. But it’s pretty bad.
“This is not on. We’ve been trying to take these things out of the game for ages, and that’s just crap.”
In All-Australian contention after a blistering run of form since returning from a hamstring injury, Rankine is now set to once again spend an extended period on the sidelines.
The former verdict will earn the star Crow a three-match ban, while the latter will see him referred directly to the Tribunal, where a suspension of four weeks or more is all but certain.
Christian has only sent graded one incident as ‘severe’ impact in 2024: Essendon forward Peter Wright’s collision with Sydney’s Harry Cunningham in Round 2, that saw the Swan need to be stretchered off.
