ADELAIDE spent up to 10 hours weighing up whether to contest Rory Sloane's rough conduct charge at the AFL Tribunal. 

The Crows had a bit of an inkling soon after last Saturday night's Showdown with Port Adelaide they might have a problem. 

A fine was the general consensus as the appropriate punishment for Sloane’s hit on Brad Ebert, so the Crows were surprised when the Match Review Committee notified them at lunchtime on Monday that it was a two-game suspension that could be reduced to one game with an early guilty plea. 

Read the full Match Review Panel statement

The Crows spent the rest of Monday sifting through vision of the incident from various angles.

The more they looked at it, the more it looked like a football incident.

Sloane didn't come in with a swinging arm when he made contact with Ebert, hence why it wasn't a striking charge.

Three factors worked against the Crows.

One was the blood streaming from Ebert's face.

The second was the contact was high, an undeniable fact they couldn't argue. 

The third was Ebert went off the ground for a concussion test. 

If Ebert stayed on the ground, more likely than not the contact would have been classified as low impact and Sloane could have accepted a fine.

But because Ebert had a concussion test before returning to play later in the game, the MRP judged the contact as medium impact. 

The Crows also looked at whether Ebert had been affected by a contest with Eddie Betts earlier in the game.

Their medical staff believed that could have had an impact on Ebert leaving the ground for a concussion test after his contact with Sloane. 

But after watching vision of that incident and watching Ebert's movement later in that quarter, they decided there was too much time between the two incidents.

The Crows continued their discussions on Tuesday morning all the way up to the deadline of 11.30am when they had to decide whether to accept the early guilty plea. 

Sloane was involved in the entire process. 

A suspension would have ended his chances of winning the Brownlow Medal, but his concerns were only with the team. 

Sloane didn't want to miss Friday night's crucial clash with West Coast with a top-two spot on the line.

The Crows could have mounted a case that the contact was careless and without any intent, but they weren't confident that would be enough to have the decision over-turned.

"We tried to look at a number of different avenues and ultimately we were extremely frustrated over how, I guess, the charge was wrapped around an incident rather than the incident fitting a charge," Adelaide's head of football David Noble said on FIVEaa on Tuesday. 

"(But) it’s risk versus reward (whether to challenge).

"The way that the charge is compiled is that the loading ends up being a two-week component. 

"The discount now for taking an early plea is that you get a one-week discount, as we’ve done.

"I know Andrew (Fagan, Crows chief executive) and myself were onto (the AFL's) Mark Evans probably half a dozen to 10 times over the past 24 hours. 

"We’ll just continue to work and we’ll give them the feedback and they’ll certainly know how extremely frustrated and disappointed we are with it."

Port's players let Rory Sloane know their displeasure with his hit on Brad Ebert. Picture: AFL Photos