Geelong captain Patrick Dangerfield is staring down the barrel of a suspension handed to him by the AFL’s match review officer (MRO) after dumping Carlton midfielder Sam Walsh in a dangerous tackle.

Dangerfield drove Walsh’s head into the MCG turf in a tackle inside the first minute of Friday night’s top-eight blockbuster between the two sides.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Patrick Dangerfield in hot water for dangerous tackle.

Walsh’s momentum was already going forward, but the second motion of Dangerfield’s drilling tackle could hurt him in the eyes of MRO, as Mitch Cleary explained.

“It’s a nervous wait for him and clearly it will be looked at by the MRO,” Cleary said on Channel 7’s coverage.

“It’s the exact action the AFL is trying to remove from the game; it’s the driving motion, it’s both arms pinned, and it’s Walsh’s head making contact with the ground.

“Dangerfield is lucky he (Walsh) wasn’t concussed or didn’t require going off (the ground).

“If they do deem this a dangerous tackle, I would expect (it to be graded as) careless, high contact and medium impact, which would be one week.

“The Cats play Essendon next week, so clearly a nervous wait for Patrick Dangerfield before tomorrow.”

Fears for Walsh’s health were quickly dispelled when he got up and played on without concussion.

Dangerfield had only just come back into the side, having battled a similar hamstring injury to the many that have dogged him since 2020.

The Cats skipper hadn’t played since injuring his hamstring in Round 7 during Geelong’s last clash with Carlton.

“He’s ready to go,” Geelong coach Chris Scott said of Dangerfield on Thursday.

“We’ve wanted to get him back so he can just play his normal role. The shackles are off.”

Geelong believed Dangerfield fully recovered from his latest hamstring setback “pretty quickly”, but held back the explosive midfielder in a conservative approach.

“The last half of his time out from playing has been built around his conditioning program and making sure that when he did come back he was ready to perform really well,” Scott said.

“The question mark is, when a player’s been out for a while, what their match conditioning is like.

“That’s obviously hard to get when you’re not playing, and touch and things like that.

“But in terms of his physical conditioning, he’s in really good shape and has done a power of work.”

- With AAP