Red-card justice should be the simplest and clearest act in an AFL game

RED cards - and instant disciplinary action - in AFL games should be simple to manage for off-the-ball incidents.

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SO far, every reason the naysayers give in the red-card debate actually justifies the AFL joining other sports with instant justice.

“It would be rare,” the cynics say. More reason to introduce the red card then. If there would be very few moments that would demand the match officials to send off an AFL player, no-one should fear the red-card concept.

Red cards might even lead to less callous off-the-ball incidents - and make the game safer and less at risk to suspicious tactics in big games, such as the showpiece AFL grand final.

“It has to be clear cut,” some scoff. It could not have been clearer with West Coast midfielder Andrew Gaff at the weekend. Or with Melbourne midfielder-defender Tom Bugg’s strike of Sydney defender Callum Mills last year. Or the infamous Barry Hall moment on West Coast defender Brent Staker in 2008 or the moment in 1972 when Collingwood wingman John Greening was left comatose for 24 hours from a behind-the-play incident in the away clash with St Kilda.

Both the Gaff and Bugg incidents in the past 14 months were off the ball. Both were sufficiently captured on camera. Both were the simplest cases to administer by the AFL match review panel or officer - and the tribunal - in the aftermath.

West Coast Eagles midfielder Andrew Gaff departs the AFL tribunal after being banned for eight matches. Picture: AAP Image/Luis Ascui

Both could have been easily dealt with at the time by a match referee sitting next to the score review official in the grandstands. There is no doubt the video evidence from Perth Stadium of Gaff’s hit on Fremantle teenager Andrew Brayshaw is conclusive - and quite easy for any AFL match official, even the emergency field umpire, to deal with while the stretcher carries a victim off the field.

Behind-the-ball incidents - such as the Gaff and Bugg moments - deserve to be dealt with a red card.

“There wouldn’t be one person in the football world that doesn’t acknowledge that was a hit off the ball and 100 per cent wrong,” says Hall of Fame Legend and Advertiser columnist Malcolm Blight.

It is far from the “grey zone” that AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan talks about when he recalls how the red-card system worked in his time as an amateur footballer. In the AFL, unlike amateur football, there is no shortage of vision to remove any doubt on why a player is bloodied and on the deck with no hope of playing the game to its finish.

There is no defence for Gaff’s actions - and was none worth presenting at his tribunal hearing that ended with an eight-game ban.

Blight is advocating red cards “so we don’t have to see that idiocy again”.

This is the simple part. And reducing West Coast to 21 players while Fremantle had 21 (while Brayshaw was on his way to hospital to be treated for a broken jaw and four dislodged teeth, some of which might not be restored to their original positions) is fair.

But the tricky question is: Should the Eagles have played with 17 - one short - on the field, as is the case in other sports with red-card justice?

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