CARLTON is unlikely to launch an appeal against the four-week suspension handed to Chris Judd for his 'chicken-wing' tackle on North Melbourne's Leigh Adams.
Coach Brett Ratten addressed the media the morning after the marathon tribunal hearing that found Judd guilty of intentional misconduct and while he strongly defended his skipper's character, he doubted an appeal was on the cards.
"We've just gone through training and opposition [analysis], so we haven't had time. That's sort of up to Andy [McKay] and Greg [Swann] to have a chat about that and see where we go with that," Ratten said from Visy Park on Wednesday.
"But I doubt whether we'd push on with an appeal."
Ratten refused to be drawn on the severity of the tribunal's sanction.
"They make the outcome," he said.
"We're disappointed Chris is not playing and he's disappointed as well, [but] they sit down, take all the evidence and then make the decision."
Despite the tribunal's finding of intentional misconduct, Ratten maintained that Judd's sole purpose was to stop Adams from handballing.
He reiterated Judd's remorse over the incident, but said suggestions it showed the dual-Brownlow medallist's character was in some way flawed were without basis.
"I can vouch for Chris every day of the week," he said.
"I think he's one of the finest people that I've met, not just in football, but in life.
"I think he gets judged pretty harshly across the land."
Ratten was asked his thoughts on match review panel chairman Mark Fraser publicly commenting on the case before it was heard. While he hadn't heard Fraser's comments on the unsportsmanlike nature of the incident, he clearly held a dim view of Fraser's actions.
"That's up to the AFL to decide whether that's what you do or you don't do," he said.
"Do you make comments before the hearing or do you sit back like normal judges and wait to make those calls?
"That's up to the AFL. That's nothing to do with the Carlton Football Club."
Ratten remained largely measured in his responses to a barrage of questions at the regularly scheduled press conference.
But that calm demeanour slipped somewhat when he was asked if his players needed to move away from the tackling techniques imparted by specialist tackling coach John Donehue.
"I find that pretty offensive really," he said.
"There's no way that we have any form of tackle technique that goes out there to do that. I think that scrutiny could go through a lot of teams if you (the media) want to put the time into it, which I don't think people do.
"Have the same scrutiny as they do on Chris Judd on the tackling techniques of all the teams in the competition.
"I raise my voice and I probably find that pretty average that we go down that path to try and isolate it onto our football club when we could show you vision everywhere … there's tackles that could come under enormous scrutiny, but this one was fairly visible and was easy to detect.
"It becomes now a focus that our football club goes out of our way to do these types of things - it's not right and it's not fair."
Ratten must now resurrect a season that started amid such promise without his chief playmaker and the coach lamented the string of injuries and suspensions to key players that has appeared to conspire against him.
"It was Friday the 13th last week and that [incident] worked really hand in glove with that date," he said.
"It's one of those seasons. It's a bit like snakes and ladders - we come up the ladder and then we come back down because of circumstances.
"It's one of those seasons that hasn't gone great for us in a lot of areas of the game.
"I know we'll be a lot better for it going forward in some of the things that we do. How we manage the players and even from the lesson that we got with that tackle from Chris.
"We'll learn a lot from the things that have happened in 2012."
