Melbourne Victory full-back Jason Geria has been cleared to play in Sunday’s Elimination Final Melbourne Derby after his two game ban for a Round 25 red card was reduced to one game by Football Australia’s independent Disciplinary and Ethics Committee.
Geria received a direct red card for a tackle on Brisbane Roar’s Corey Brown in the penultimate round of the regular season, and was handed a two-game ban by FA’s independent Match Review Panel (MRP).
The original two-game suspension came as a result of the MRP finding Geria had committed the offence of “Serious foul play (e.g. when challenging for the ball)”; the minimum sanction for the offence is a mandatory one-game ban, but the MRP proposed a sanction of two games – a ban that would have sidelined Geria through the first round of the Isuzu UTE A-League Finals Series.
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Geria referred the matter to the Disciplinary and Ethics Committee which sat on Monday afternoon to consider the incident. The committee, comprising of Anthony Lo Surdo SC (Chair) Stephen Free SC and David Barrett considered a range of factors including the player’s remorse and disciplinary record – factors that are not available to the MRP when considering offences.
The committee concluded Geria had committed serious foul play when challenging Brown in Victory’s draw with Brisbane – but reduced the MRP’s two-game ban to the minimum sanction of one game.
Geria is now eligible for selection in Victory’s Elimination Final against Melbourne City on Sunday, May 5 (5pm AEST kick-off). Victory finished third in the regular season and will host last season’s Premiers and Grand Finalists City, who squeezed into the top six on the final day of the regular season.
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