The Match Review Panel must evaluate the way it grades punches, writes Jon Ralph

THROUGH a softening of the penalties the AFL has been actively condoning players belting each other and getting away with a slap on the wrist, writes Jon Ralph.

Trent Cotchin escaped suspension for a jumper punch. Picture: Getty Images

THE AFL’s match review panel is punch drunk.

Which is understandable given everyone seems to be punching everyone in the AFL these days and getting away with it.

Trent Cotchin’s intentional strike on Lachie Neale is the flashpoint that highlights how lax the AFL’s policies on legalised brutality have become.

Through a softening of the penalties the league has been actively condoning players belting on and getting away with a slap on the wrist.

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What kind of message are we sending the kids in local competitions by the AFL’s rules on punches, tummy taps and strikes?

Quite apart from the verbal stuff, which this week showed you can spout the most disgusting bile about a man’s wife as long as he doesn’t put in an official complaint.

The message is that you can punch an opponent as hard as you can in the guts and only get fined, witness Charlie Cameron v Kane Turner.

You can grab a player by the jumper, cock your fist and ram it into his head and only get fined, as Cotchin did to Fremantle’s Neale.

Trent Cotchin’s jumper punch on Lachie Neale.

You can repeatedly jumper-punch opponents and not even get fined, as Lance Franklin has done to Alex Silvagni, Simon White and Nick Robertson.

And if a pesky tagger is hanging onto you and you haven’t already jumper-punched them, you can swing an elbow back and take your pound of flesh.

That’s what Nat Fyfe did to Elliott Yeo and he was slapped with the AFL’s version of a wet lettuce — a $1000 fine.

Do the sums and realise Fyfe might be on somewhere around $800,000, about 10 times last year’s average Australian wage of $78,832.

So that fine is the man in the street’s version of a $100 hit, fractionally higher than a parking fine but much less than running a red light or being hit with a speeding ticket.

To actually be suspended for striking you have to commit the AFL’s version of taking a crowbar onto the football field.

Already this year in the JLT Series and opening eight rounds, 18 players have only been fined despite being found guilty of striking.

Those suspended must consider themselves extremely unlucky.

Patty Ryder ran towards Riley Knight and whacked him with a left-armed roundhouse and James Parsons forcefully elbowed Luke Hodge in the middle of the ‘G on Easter Monday.

Jesse Hogan and Jordan Lewis dropped opponents with behind-the-play head punches and Toby Nankervis’ behind-play elbow to Richard Douglas was savage and obvious.

But apart from that, go your hardest boys.

Because that is the message the MRP’s guidelines send, with low-impact, intentional hits to the body only penalised with fines.

If you do want to punch someone, definitely grab a fistful of jumper first.

And then look away like Cotchin even though you know exactly where your hit-zone is, because the MRP will grade it as careless.

MRP member Jimmy Bartel talked about the MRP being “handcuffed” by the regulations in assessing Cotchin.

Presumably if a player was handcuffed you could punch him too, but make sure you are looking away and have that jumper firmly in grasp.

The AFL crows about its role as a visionary organisation which pushes social advocacy.

Just as St Kilda’s family-related sledging undermines its roles in gay rights advocacy and pushing for an AFLW team, so too does the AFL cut itself off at the knees.

It can’t trumpet the good it is doing in the community while slapping players on the wrists for deliberate, forceful punches — both to the head and body.

Jordan Lewis was suspended earlier this season. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

We used to laugh at the NRL for that kind of thuggish behaviour.

Melbourne best-and-fairest winner David Schwarz says it is simple as this: punch an opponent, you get a week.

If you are disqualified from the Brownlow Medal, so be it, because you shouldn’t be the AFL’s best and fairest player when found guilty of punching someone.

If every player knew the ramifications of a single punch we would stop this issue in a heartbeat and yet somehow we relaxed the rules instead of hardened them.