Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Gaff, a free agent who has been weighing up whether to head home to a Victorian club next season, was devastated by his actions and has apologised. He will likely be sent straight to the AFL Tribunal and will receive a lengthy ban. WA Police Force Commissioner Chris Dawson had said while it was rare for police to lay criminal charges from an incident in professional sport, police would assess the incident. “We will make an assessment on this incident as we would with other matters of public interest, and we would encourage any parties directly connected and concerned with this matter to contact WA Police Force," Mr Dawson said. Eagles chief executive Trevor Nisbett said suggestions of police action were "inflammatory".

"I am not prepared to go there. Some of those inflammatory comments by some people just are unwarranted because everyone knows we have a process in the AFL and the club will take the process to the tribunal. The AFL will deal with it, the player will get the penalty the AFL tribunal deems as deserved in this case," he said. Loading "I would be very hopeful that we let the process go through the AFL like all other processes do," he said. Nisbett also apologised by phone to Brayshaw's father Mark Brayshaw, who is head of the AFL Coaches Association. Brayshaw's brother Hamish plays for the Eagles and is friends with Gaff. “I think five days ago the [Brayshaw] brothers and Andrew Gaff were on the golf course together so it’s an extraordinary situation we all find ourselves in,” Nisbett said in Perth.

“It may not have been intentional but we’ll have to get that from Andrew. It’s totally out of character when a player who has never been reported at any level, through juniors, through all his senior 174 games, and it just came out of the blue." “I spoke to Andrew Gaff last night and he was beside himself with what happened. I think people saw the remorse he had, but it doesn’t exonerate him and he has to take responsibility — which he’s taken, but he’s taking it pretty tough.” David Galbally, QC, one of Melbourne's most respected legal authorities, said police would have the power to get involved for what he said was an "appalling" incident. "Looking at it, it's a very serious assault. If you were just on the street and committed something like that, a judge would look at putting you in [jail]. You would really run the risk of either getting a suspended sentence or getting a small stint," he told Fairfax Media.

"He would be very hard-pushed to get a penalty that didn't have a record for an assault like that - unprovoked." Eagle Andrew Gaff is set to face a lengthy ban. Credit:AAP "Police could certainly lay charges for assault. It's been done before - Leigh Matthews, [Neville] Bruns incident [in 1985] - because it clearly is an assault and it's an assault occasioning actual bodily harm," he said. "He [Brayshaw] could lodge a complaint with the police but they could initiate it of their free will. They could [do] it themselves but they would need his co-operation. If he said to them: 'I don't want you to do it' then it would be unlikely they would do it." Docked: Fremantle's Andrew Brayshaw left the ground bleeding from the mouth after an incident involving West Coast's Andrew Gaff.