Harvey hit for six, again
North veteran Brent Harvey's six-match suspension remains after losing his appeal
A BITTERLY disappointed Brent Harvey will miss the opening six rounds of next season after his case at the AFL Appeals Board was dismissed on Tuesday night.
The North Melbourne veteran was already set to miss the first four games of next year after his strike on West Coast's Daniel Kerr in the club's elimination final.
But Harvey chose to appeal his two-week ban for striking Adam Selwood, which was handed down at the Tribunal last week.
Harvey didn't take the stand during the appeal, with his team arguing last week's decision was an "error of law" and should be overturned.
Harvey's advocate Sam Horgan also suggested Selwood should have been called or present during last week's hearing to give evidence.
But the AFL's representative defended the decision made by last week's jury and its chairman, saying the Kangaroos had the option to request to speak to Selwood but didn't exercise it.
The jury (which was a completely new one to the panel that suspended Harvey last week) took more than half an hour to deliberate its verdict.
After the hearing, Harvey said he believed he was a good chance to escape the two-match ban, but had no regrets for challenging the Match Review Panel's findings last week.
He could have accepted four matches on the sidelines originally for the two incidents, but chose to challenge both the Kerr and Selwood findings.
"No, I don't regret appealing because I thought we needed to do it. When you're innocent you don't really want to cop what they served up," the 34-year-old said.
"I was very confident [before the appeal].
"[It's] the same situation as last week - I'm going to be missing six weeks of the AFL season in 2013. It's very disappointing."
Harvey continued the trend of failure at the appeals board. He was the 15th player to appeal his sanction since the appeals board was formed in 2005, with only one - Collingwood's Nick Maxwell in 2009 - being successful.
Callum Twomey is a reporter for the AFL website. Follow him on Twitter at @AFL_CalTwomey