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The AFL Tribunal hears a high-profile appeal against Port Adelaide's Zak Butters's fine for abusing an umpire.

Butters was fined $1,500 for using abusive and offensive language after umpire Nick Foot paid a free kick against the Power in their loss to St Kilda at Adelaide Oval in Gather Round.

Foot says Butters asked him "how much are they paying you?" — Butters denies saying this, and his club says the star midfielder has been branded a liar.

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Butters' counsel is speaking to open the case, pointing to their first reason for the appeal - that the fact that Tribunal member Jason Johnson left his business and got in his car during the final submissions and deliberations.

Counsel said that his behaviour was "inexplicable" and "amounted to a miscarriage of justice".

"We say it is to be inferred that Mr Johnson was distracted, and distracted before he left his office," Butters' counsel Paul Ehrlich KC said.

They say that Mr Johnson failed in his duty to pay close attention to the testimony.

ReactReact14m agoMon 20 Apr 2026 at 6:57am

Tribunal hearing a case of whose word is believed

A

By Andrew McGarry

Usually when there's a challenge to a penalty at the AFL Tribunal, it involves players being banned for one or more matches.

Not this time. This isn't about someone trying to hang onto Brownlow medal eligibility, or make sure they are available for a big match.

Regardless of tonight's result, Zak Butters will be running out at Adelaide Oval on Saturday night against Geelong.

$1,500 is a drop in the ocean for a top-line AFL footballer, especially one who has been fined more than $50,000 in his career for various infractions.

What this is about — and why it got this far in the first place — is a player's word against an umpire's word, and which person's word the Tribunal takes as true.

Butters, who is not just a star of the AFL but acting captain of Port Adelaide, believes he has been branded a liar by the original Tribunal finding.

Tonight the outcome will either exonerate him — suggesting umpire Nick Foot heard wrong — or back the original result, leaving Butters with a permanent mark against his record.

ReactReact17m agoMon 20 Apr 2026 at 6:54am

What the original Tribunal hearing found

A

By Andrew McGarry

The original hearing lasted an hour and 40 minutes, before the panel of Renee Enbom KC, Jason Johnson and Darren Gaspar deliberated for 25 minutes and upheld the charge of abusive and insulting language towards an umpire.

The Tribunal had a 5:45pm deadline and gave its verdict before then, with reasoning to be distributed the following day.

The Tribunal was "satisfied to the requisite standard" that Butters had made the alleged remark.

"It is implausible that Mr Foot would invent the offending comment and it was not put to him that he had done so," the judgement said.