When Roy O'Donovan suggested that Manny Muscat deserved an Oscar for his performance in 'Getting A Headbutt From A Former Cork City Striker', he may have been stretching the truth a bit.
O'Donovan, who is currently playing for Central Coast Mariners in Australia, certainly had cause to react after the Wellington Phoenix defender aimed a couple of elbows in his direction during Mariners' 3-1 win last week. However, it's fair to say that his response was slightly over the top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvZ9wZlnIHw
Nonetheless, he somehow escaped without a red card with the referee deciding that warranted nothing more than a yellow. Unfortunately for O'Donovan, the A League haven't seen fit to go along with the referee's decision in this case.
The 30 year old Corkman was up in front of an independent disciplinary committee on Wednesday and he has pleaded guilty, with mitigating circumstances, to a charge of violent off-the-ball conduct.
Given the nature of the incident, which Pheonix captain Andrew Durante called 'one of the worst things that I've seen in my career', the committee decided to ban O'Donovan for a whopping eight weeks. While the committee took into account O'Donovan's previous good record, they decided the headbutt warranted the same punishment as that handed out to Kevin Muscat for this notorious tackle on Adrian Zahra back in 2011.
That puts O'Donovan joint second on the list of longest A League suspensions with Danny Vukovic's nine month ban for striking a referee back in 2008 significantly out in front.
For his part in the headbutt incident, Manny Muscat was banned for two games.
