A Victorian amateur footballer has been banned for life after being caught on camera savagely hitting an unsuspecting opponent.

Brad Huhn, who played for Thomson in the Geelong District Football League, was this week deregistered from football.

The six-week ban he copped for hitting Winchelsea’s Jo Fama pushed him over the 16-week career threshold after which players are banned for life.

Huhn had claimed that Fama had hit him in his injured ribs with an elbow but the tribunal did not agree that the provocation was there.

“It was clear Joseph was holding his ground, not swinging his arm,” the Geelong Advertiser reported tribunal chairman Werner Weigl as saying.

Camera Icon The moment Brad Huhn shockingly felled his opponent.

According to the Advertiser, Huhn had previously been suspended for an intentional strike in 2015, a season in which he was banned twice by the tribunal.

Fama told the tribunal he remembered little of the incident.

“The next thing I remember, I was looking at the grass,” the Advertiser reported.

He returned after the hit to play for five minutes in a forward pocket but didn’t play after half-time because of concussion.