Australian rules player Peter Filandia has been suspended for 10 matches after pleading guilty to biting an opponent's testicles during a game last week.

Filandia, 31, was playing for Port Melbourne against Springvale in the Australian Football League's feeder competition, the Victorian Football League (VFL).

St Kilda AFL player Chad Davis, playing for Springvale, suffered a perforated scrotum and lost a small amount of blood, a club doctor told the VFL tribunal in Melbourne. He also needed a tetanus injection.

Filandia told the tribunal he could not breathe when he became entangled with Davis and bit him as a reflex action.

However, Filandia did not know which part of his opponent's body he had bitten, he said.

"It was a split-second decision," Filandia told reporters after the hearing.

Tribunal chairman Eddie Power ordered Filandia to undergo player counselling before resuming playing.

In a similar case last year, former rugby league international John Hopoate was banned by the Australian National Rugby League for 12 weeks after poking a finger up the backside of an opponent.

Hopoate was sacked by his club Wests-Tigers but joined rival club Northern Eagles in June 2001.