Brisbane Lions star Charlie Cameron and GWS tagger Toby Bedford have sensationally had their respective three-match suspensions for rough conduct overturned on appeal.

In separate Appeal Board hearings on Thursday night, both players successfully argued the league’s Tribunal had made an error of law when upholding their bans two days earlier.

Cameron, who was initially charged over the tackle that left West Coast’s Liam Duggan concussed, is now free to play in Brisbane’s clash with ladder-leaders Sydney on Sunday.

Brisbane argued the tribunal “put the cart before the horse” during Cameron’s initial hearing by focusing on the tribunal guidelines before determining whether the player had actually committed a reportable offence when tackling Duggan.

“The tribunal reasoned backward from the conduct to conclude the conduct had a certain character to it,” Lions lawyer Chris Winneke said.

“We say this tackle, the approach to the tackle and the actual tackle itself was a lawful tackle.

“This is a great game, Australian football, because it’s an incredibly skilled game with incredibly skilled players, who engage in conduct which by definition and requirement requires body-on-body contact.

“There’ll be circumstances where players will suffer injury despite players exercising reasonable care. To find that Cameron did not exercise reasonable care was simply not open on the evidence.”

Both grounds for appeal were disputed by AFL lawyer Lisa Hannon, but the appeals board agreed with the Lions.

“The tribunal made a finding that the conduct of Cameron was unreasonable in the circumstances, however, what the tribunal did not do was deal with the elements of the charge which is set out in the laws of Australian football,” appeals board chair Will Houghton said.

“Whilst we accept that the tribunal found the conduct to be unreasonable, which is one element of the offence, it completely failed to consider the second critical element of the offence: that is, whether the conduct was likely to cause injury.

“Absent that consideration … we consider that the tribunal did fall into an error of law that had a material impact on its decision.”

Later in the evening, GWS argued Bedford’s tackle which left Richmond’s Tim Taranto concussed was not “careless conduct” under the Tribunal guidelines.

The Giants also took issue with the “severe” grading of the impact and disputed the AFL’s argument that there was an alternative way to tackle.

GWS lawyer Anais d’Arville did not originally plan to piggyback the Cameron decision but was able to use the same issue around Law 18.7 — specifically the “likely to cause injury” element — to his advantage.

“We accept that the Tribunal found unreasonable conduct, however, it made no finding about whether or not the conduct of player Bedford was likely to cause injury,” Houghton said.

Bedford is free to play in the Giants’ home clash with Gold Coast on Saturday.

Earlier on Thursday, Brisbane coach Chris Fagan described this week’s tackle controversy as a “shock wave” for the competition and defiantly declared he would not be telling his players to change their technique for the time being.

“You can see by the reaction over the last 48-72 hours that there’s a lot of confusion within playing ranks and coaching ranks,” Fagan told reporters on Thursday morning.

“Coaches, we don’t necessarily know how to coach tackling now.

“Things like the sling tackle and driving guys into the ground, we clearly know that’s out.

“We know you can’t bump [high] — if you hit them in the head that’s a problem.

“But what happened on the weekend was a little bit more of a shock wave and we’ve got to see where it all ends up.”

AAP