AFL should introduce send-off rule if serious about ending acts like Jeremy Cameron’s elbow

IF the AFL is serious about getting thuggish acts out of the game - albeit the rare ones that do occur - a send-off rule needs to be considered. The brutal act that knocked Harris Andrews out is a prime example of ths, writes Jon Ralph.

Jeremy Cameron KOs Harris Andrews.

JEREMY Cameron’s cocked elbow should tell you everything about the brutal act he perpetrated on Brisbane Lion Harris Andrews.

No matter how the match review officer eventually grades it, his errant elbow to the head of a player courageously going back with the flight was savage and the fall-out horrific.

There is making an opponent earn a mark deep inside 50m, and lifting your elbow to collect them with such force they lose consciousness on impact.

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Cameron will head straight to a tribunal appearance on Tuesday with a hit deemed to the head and of severe impact.

If Steve Hocking wants to avoid 24 hours of extra attention, he and Michael Christian will grade it on Sunday morning before a Monday tribunal appearance.

Four weeks seems too light, five or six weeks starts to get into the ballpark of acceptable.

Teammates check on Harris Andrews after being knocked out.

It will be Cameron’s 11th charge since 2012, found guilty nine times including his four-match ban for a rough conduct hit on Brisbane’s Rhys Mathieson.

After that 2016 hit Leon Cameron said his spearhead would “definitely have to look at he way he approaches that type of contest,” but here we are again.

At first glance the AFL’s video review farce and the AFL’s send-off rule would look to have little in common.

But if the AFL is serious about getting thuggish acts out of the game - albeit the rare ones that do occur - a send-off rule needs to be considered.

All-Australian full-back contender Andrews was out of Saturday’s game within minutes, and Cameron was free to dominate in his wake.

The AFL’s video review system throws up ridiculous decisions by the week, third umpires often introducing errors when none were made in the first place.

They have pressed the wrong button, they have used the wrong goal-line angles, they have even looked at the wrong player touching the ball to over-rule correct decisions.

We need an AFL bunker that sees a panel of two or three officials ruling on every single decision referred across the weekend.

Darcy Gardiner remonstrates with Jeremy Cameron.

The NRL’s bunker isn’t perfect but it can’t be worse that what the AFL currently has on show, the prospect of a match-turning decision in this year’s Grand Final is very real.

The problem isn’t just the technology used in referrals - although the AFL has already changed the position of its goal-line cameras this year.

It is the lack of consistency from the third umpires who seem to have dramatically different standards across the weekend’s nine games.

If we had two or three officials with football experience and a hint of nous about technology, could we trust them to action the send-off rule?

If we chose people with enough experience and expertise, they would have the credibility to banish players in the very rare incidents that Cameron involved himself in.

Think of the very few times a send-off rule would have been relevant in the past decade - Tom Bugg’s strike on Callum Mills, Barry Hall on Brent Staker, Dean Solomon’s elbow on Cameron Ling.

That crew might even have until the next break - quarter-time or half-time - to make a decision about throwing a player out of the game.

Don’t use the red card for line-ball incidents with shades of grey, do it when a player loses the right to play on that afternoon or night.

As it is, Cameron might have inflicted a mortal wound on the Giants’ season already.

In the next four weeks they take on eighth-placed Hawthorn, third-placed West Coast, ladder-leader Richmond and fourth-placed Port Adelaide.

With Toby Greene and Rory Lobbe still leading the unavailabilities, it’s hard to see them making a successful finals charge.

This game is about bravery and the kind of courageous acts Andrews committed, not picking that player off without even a shred of duty of care.

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