THE SYDNEY Swans leadership group will meet with Barry Hall next week to decide on whether a punishment will be handed down by the club to the full-forward. Hall was last night suspended by the AFL tribunal for seven weeks for his strike on West Coast’s Brent Staker.

Co-captain Craig Bolton would not say whether Hall’s place in the leadership group is now in jeopardy.

“That’s something that we haven’t spoken about extensively,” Bolton said.

“We’re obviously going to sit down with Barry and work through this and find a way to move forward, which I’m sure we’ll do.

“I’m only one of seven in the leadership group so I guess once we speak to Barry in more detail, get a gauge of how he’s feeling and how he’s responded to it and tell him how we’ve been feeling through the whole thing, we can move forward and get some plan of attack out of this. He’s obviously going to want to win some respect and trust back among the group and how he goes about doing that he can outline to us next week.”

Bolton said the leadership group did not have a scale of punishments for this sort of incident, as it was unprecedented at the club.

“The circumstances surrounding the incident weren’t something we as a playing group endorse, or as a club, so it’s a little bit different and we’re in a bit of uncharted territory.”

Hall underwent surgery on his broken wrist on Monday, but Bolton said the injury was irrelevant.

“I think you can only punish him on what his actions were. I don’t think you can take into account the injury. That’s a by-product of a different incident that would have happened anyway…I think the general consensus was that it was always going to be a pretty hefty penalty.

“Seven weeks is a long time but I don’t think it unreasonable at all. Barry’s said it’s fair so we’ve just got to move on from here and accept that we’re going to be without him for a few months.”

However Bolton admitted that the players had been let down by their former captain.

“There’s definitely some disappointment from the players that he let things go to his head I guess and make that reactionary mistake … it’s all about being honest with Barry. I think Leo (Barry) said a little bit to the media on Monday, how we feel about it. It’s going to be pretty hard on Barry.

“[Hall]’s acknowledged and taken full responsibility for what he’s done and I think he will do that to the players when we speak to him. For now, we’ve got to support and move forward. We’ve still got a big season ahead of us.”