Dermott Brereton slams AFL players for flopping and milking free kicks

An AFL great has taken aim at current day players’ antics and put the onus on the league to hand out harsher punishments.

Dermott isn't a fan of flopping

AFL great Dermott Brereton has taken aim at players who stage for free kicks and called on the league to come down harder on those caught.

The former Hawthorn hardman fired up following a host of contentious decisions in recent weeks that resulted in players milking free kicks.

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Brereton said the only way to start stamping out players who flop for free kicks is to start handing out financial punishments.

“We can be called dinosaurs, but it does take courage to play Australian rules football in any era.

“The one thing that our era was irked by was people flopping, people staging for the benefit of either a free kick or 50-metre penalty.

“I can remember doing it myself as a young man thinking, ‘I’d get a free kick out of this’, and respected opponents standing over me while I was pretending to be hurt yelling and screaming at me, ‘Get up you weak cheating dog’ … with a few adjectives thrown in.

“The insult hurt so much that I just said ‘I can’t be doing that ever again’.”

The forward great said the league must step in to eradicate the acts and called out players who use flopping in their games.

“But it’s almost like some people in the media now say, ‘Oh, he’s challenged the tackler to do better, he has challenged the umpire to make a decision here’,” Brereton explained.

“No, you know what? We’ve got a 360-degree game that’s very difficult as it is and if we have players flopping and staging it is a blight on the game.

“We need to stamp it out … if we allow it to flourish in our game in the heartland of football, that just shouldn’t be (allowed), we shouldn’t allow that.

“We should be just stamping it out … I just think it’s nonsense and an awful way to go about your craft as a footballer, a professional footballer.”

Dermott isn't a fan of flopping

Richmond star Jack Riewoldt echoed a similar sentiment to Brereton, stating players are starting to “play possum” for free kicks.

Riewoldt said the rise in players being reported for dangerous tackles was causing confusion among the league, but players are starting to exploit the umpires tendency to reward any high contact.

“I reckon players might be cottoning on to this, and starting to play a bit possum,” he said.

“I reckon players are looking for free kicks. As we’ve seen the high contact in tackles has become prevalent over the last decade of AFL. Now players will take advantage of how to get a free kick. Maybe it is just going limp a little bit and dropping down?

“It’s hard to see why some are being penalised with a week, even a free kick and some aren’t.”

"I reckon players might be cottoning on to this, and starting to play a bit possum." - Jack Riewoldt thinks some players are starting to play for dangerous tackle free kicks.

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Leigh Montagna believed that the game had “gone too far” the other way in penalising the outcome of tackles and was happy to see a correction the other way.

“I’m glad that they took them all the cases to the tribunal so we can all get a better understanding of what you can and can’t do,” he said.

“At the start of the year it was pretty clear, if you dump, drive or sling and the player gets hurt, you are going to be suspended.

“I felt this weekend we probably went too far. It was simply a case of if you lay a tackle and the player hits their head, you are going to be suspended and I didn’t necessarily agree with that.

“From where we’ve come from, we probably went a little bit too far that every tackle where a player hit their head they get suspended but I felt like we’ve come back a little bit to go, there’s got to be some sort of danger behind it to miss a week.

“I thought that there would be a chance that this would be the first time some players would get off.

“As a player you should now be able to understand, if it’s dangerous and there is a driving, dumping or slinging motion you are in trouble, but there is an element for momentum in a tackle, and if you try and take care, you should be let off.”