An
Australian Rules Football player has been sent off for having a haircut deemed
too dangerous by the referee.
Nathan
van Someren of the Simpson Tigers was given his marching orders by an umpire in
the match against Otway Districts, who claimed that his Mohawk haircut could
have poked another player in the eye.
Team
coach Leigh Walsh confirmed that match officials had dismissed Van Someren
"because his hair was too dangerous".
The
player himself - who has played with his Mohawk for three years - was left
stunned by the incident.
"Before
the game the umpire said that I could not play with my hair like that. He told
me it was dangerous," he said.
"We
all thought that he was taking the mickey out of me. A few umpires have made
jokes about my hair before, so I didn't think any more of it."
When Van
Someren was substituted on, however - there are no red cards in the sport, with enforced substitutions used instead - it emerged that the umpire had been deadly
serious.
"I
was just standing there and he came across to me and goes, 'I thought I told
you you couldn't come on the ground'," Van Someren added.
"I
sort of just looked at him like 'what?' and he's like, 'no, I told you you
couldn't come on the ground with that hairstyle, you have to go off'."
The
Victorian league has since asserted that the umpire had overstepped the mark,
admitting that he had been a little too zealous in applying a rule meant to
protect players from opponents wearing jewellery or other items that could
cause injury.
"In
this case it's probably been interpreted a little bit too broadly," said
umpires' chief Gerard Ryan.