One shove, forty years gone - and a valid-reason ruling every HR team should read
A long-serving AFL umpires coach lost his unfair dismissal appeal on July 30, 2026, after a physical run-in caught on CCTV.
The Australian Football League dismissed the coach for misconduct in May 2025 after an altercation with a member of the public who came onto a closed training ground. He challenged the dismissal, lost at first instance, appealed, and a Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission has now dismissed that appeal as well.
The incident lasted only minutes. On April 8, 2025, the coach was supervising umpire training at North Sydney Oval, a ground the AFL had booked and closed to the public. A member of the public, anonymised in the decision, was running laps. The coach told him the ground was private and asked him to leave. The man refused and kept trying to run. For about two and a half minutes, the coach moved from side to side to block his path.
It then turned physical. The coach's account, which the Deputy President accepted for the moment the camera did not capture, was that the man grabbed his shoulder first. What the CCTV showed next was harder for the coach. The Deputy President found he grabbed the man's shirt and pushed and dragged him roughly 40 metres toward a gate, at one point letting go, pushing the man backwards and squaring up with his fists partially raised. Two AFL staff stepped in, walked the man off the field, and apologised to him. The man later complained through the AFL's integrity portal.
The AFL investigated, stood the coach down on pay, put the allegations to him, showed him the footage and let him respond in writing and in meetings before ending his employment. He acknowledged telling the man to "Piss off" and "Fuck off."
On appeal, the coach argued the Deputy President had overlooked vital context: that he was the senior official responsible for safety, that the man was trespassing, and that provocation and self-defence should have counted in his favour. He also argued he was denied a fair chance to study the CCTV and answer the case against him.
The Full Bench used the decision to clarify a point HR teams should note. Where a dismissal follows a workplace altercation, it said, the circumstances of that altercation - including provocation and self-defence - must be weighed in deciding whether there was a valid reason to dismiss, not only as mitigation later in the analysis. That sets altercation cases apart from a straightforward breach of a drug-and-alcohol or email policy, where surrounding context is usually considered at a later stage.
Even so, the point did not decide the appeal in the coach's favour. The Full Bench found the Deputy President had taken the context into account - the closed venue, the coach's safety responsibilities, and who made first contact - and had simply not accepted that it excused how far the coach took the physical response. It also found the AFL had given him adequate particulars and a genuine opportunity to respond, even though he saw the footage only once, on a small screen, and did not ask for further access at the time.
The Full Bench was candid that reasonable minds might differ, and that the coach's long service might have persuaded some members of the Commission that the dismissal was harsh. But it held that disagreement is not legal error. An unfair dismissal ruling rests on a broad, discretionary judgment, and an appeal bench will not disturb it without a demonstrated mistake. The bench granted permission to appeal because the case raised issues of wider importance, then dismissed the appeal because no error was shown.
For HR, the practical signals are clear. Investigate an altercation by examining the whole sequence, not just the final act. Give the employee real particulars and a true opportunity to respond. And record why the surrounding context does or does not excuse the conduct - because that reasoning is exactly what a tribunal will test.
