Speaking to 3AW on both Thursday night and Friday morning, Green typically didn’t pull any punches as he lashed the AFL for not making an example of Conca and suspending him for a lengthy period.
Green is the face of a campaign to stamp out violence in the community and especially one-punch attacks and he certainly didn’t like what he saw when Conca elbowed Giant Devon Smith from behind last Saturday in one of the ugliest incidents seen on a footy field this year.
“I just think the AFL had a real chance to set a precedent here,” Green declared.
“I’m all for a hard game. I’ve got no problem with that. I’ve got a problem ... is that it’s unnecessary and he just got attacked from behind.
“The AFL had the chance to say, ‘you know what, that could have been a lot worse but you cannot hit someone from behind. We’ve got to stamp out people getting hit from behind in an attack he didn’t see coming. We’re going to make it a much harsher penalty’. They had a chance to do that and yet they didn’t do that.
“I’m sure Conca would be regretting the incident badly,” Green added.
“ We all make mistakes but I still think he could have copped a harsher penalty and copped it sweet and put his hand up and said, ‘I’m sorry I did that and I didn’t mean to do it. It was a stupid brain explosion’.
“But these type of brain explosions are what’s killing people, maiming people. Every single day on my Facebook I’m getting messages from people who’ve been hit from behind in an innocent attack... and they’ve got nothing to do with the incident.
“They’re getting killed, they’re getting maimed, they’re on life support, they’re vegetables for the rest of the rest of their life.
“And yet you see it on TV. in such a massive sport and the AFL is such a massive machine. They’ve sanitised the whole game so Mums take kids to Auskick and then in the middle of the game a guy goes out and does that and cracks someone, fells him from behind in an attack that he didn’t see coming and they give him a piss weak ban.”
When asked about Green’s comments on Friday morning, McLachlan couldn’t help but agree and declared the incident should have been sent to the Tribunal rather than being left in the hands of the Match Review Panel.
As a result of this, Conca was able to make an early guilty plea and have what may have been a three-game ban reduced down to just two.
“I don’t want to pass comment on the amount of weeks,” McLachlan told 3AW.
“What I will say is that I thought that was an appalling act.
“I feel the match review panel is constrained by it and we came out yesterday and talked about the fact Mark Evans is trying to make amendments to improve and evolve with such things that feel inconsistent or outcomes that we don’t like generally.
“Now I’m not sure his amendments would pick up this one.
“I think the right outcome was to put this straight to the tribunal because if you look at the rules the application in this case was right by the MRP.
“But when you’ve got a guy, out of anger, running after a guy and hitting him from behind? He wasn’t aware of it, I just think it was a terrible, terrible act and I understand Danny Green’s comments.
“The fact that there was no injury was critical in the fact that he got two weeks,” McLachlan added.
“I think the tribunal would be best placed to look at the issue and have more subjectivity with what actually happened ... and we could have potentially got a different outcome if we’d gone to the tribunal.
“I do think we need to learn from it here and understand what could have been done better if we feel that an outcome is not quite right.”
Hardwick, though, was hardly impressed as the Conca situation was again brought up, despite the club’s inspiring 18-point win over Essendon that keeps the Tigers’ season alive.
“I was a little bit disappointed with that,” Hardwick declared.
“Reece knows and we're disappointed with his actions.
“I don’t think we need to have the CEO come out and speak about it. It's done and dusted, let's leave it in the past.
“The match review panel dealt with it so let's move on. I'll be sending him a please explain.”