MELBOURNE coach Dean Bailey has suggested that incidents like Collingwood captain Nick Maxwell's bump will always be part of the game.

The AFL tribunal suspended Maxwell for four weeks on Tuesday night, following an incident in the Pies' NAB Cup opener against West Coast that left youngster Patrick McGinnity with a broken jaw.

The penalty has divided the football community with the jury deeming Maxwell had a "realistic alternative" to making contact with his opponent.

Maxwell argued that he had executed a legal bump and that it was the right time to do it, rather than run the ball over the boundary line.

Bailey said that the physical nature of the game meant situations like these would continue to occur.

"It's not a game where you can be careful in," he said from Casey Fields on Wednesday morning. "It's a physical contact game and everyone expects to see some physical contact in it.

"There's going to be some greyness in it and I think that brings people to the game [for] that physical part of the game.

"If the ball is there, we'll try to get the footy so we can make something happen – absolutely."

Bailey added that if players continue to have the ball as their primary focus, then they will be protected by the rules.

"If there is a red ball called a Sherrin and if you go and get the Sherrin, I think you'll be safe," he said.

"If you just go after the ball, you'll be OK. The bump's going to exist anyway.

"As long as you've got your head over the ball and you get the footy, I think the game will continue to have some physical aspect to it.

"It's one of those things that is going to pop up all of the time."