The Aliir Aliir and Lachie Jones incident highlights the double standards around concussion in the AFL

The AFL handed Port Adelaide $17.84m last year – yet fined them just $100k for a serious breach of concussion protocols. It’s time for league bosses to do some serious thinking.

Aliir Aliir was allowed to keep playing after this incident. Picture: Getty Images

The AFL threatened to wield the biggest of sticks against Port Adelaide this week.

And while its punishment ended up stronger than a smack over the knuckles it was still far short of a shock-and-awe show of force for the AFL community.

The $100,000 fine is a nice round figure but given the AFL handed the Power $17.84 million in distributions last year it is close to a drop in the ocean.

After three incidents in seven seasons that saw the league ask serious questions of the Power for its concussion management, $100,000 is the smallest fine the league could have levied.

The $50,000 included in the football department cap will hurt more given clubs are already screaming at the tight parameters of the league’s soft cap.

Even including the entire $100,000 fine in the Power’s soft cap - like the Richmond Covid fine of 2020 - would have sent a stronger message, as would an additional $200,000 suspended sentence for the next five years given the trio of concerning incidents.

Put it this way: would an AFL financial heavyweight making a lineball concussion call on its best player in the last quarter of a Grand Final be so afraid of a $100,000 fine that it forced the club into a more cautious attitude?

It is why the league must warn the clubs of much heavier fines – and even the loss of draft picks – if another club transgressed in the future.

And while the AFL are at it, senior club figures like Ken Hinkley must do some deep thinking about their roles in protecting the brains of their players.

The Aliir Aliir-Lachie Jones head clashed has raised serious issues. Picture: Fox Sports

For the second time in a year Hinkley launched a passionate defence of his doctor Mark Fisher post-match despite the available evidence that the club had not taken due care with players involved in heavy collisions.

Last year after the Tom Jonas-Zac Butters collision – neither had a concussion test and both returned within eight minutes – Hinkley went hard at reporters.

“Well, I think you are questioning the doctor. I think you’re questioning the doctor, because he made the decision not to do that. You’re questioning the doctor or not?” he said.

“Are you questioning the doctor or not? Because he made a decision that didn’t need to happen? I’m not sure how much better I can answer it for you. Are you questioning a doctor of 25 years experience that he made a bad decision or he made a wrong decision?”

Yes, Ken, we are questioning your doctors, because doctors are not infallible despite their duty of care towards players.

How did Port Adelaide not go through that episode, and the subsequent AFL inquiry last year, without a thorough reassessment of their own protocols?

So the league will write to AFL clubs about their concussion management and this time it will need to promise the big stick will be used in case of another breach.

Questions abound from the Aliir Aliir-Lachie Jones controversy, some of them unanswerable and some of them providing solutions for the future.

If the AFL’s medically trained concussion spotters in the ARC are there to point out potential concussions to clubs, why do they not have the power to overrule club doctors if the vision is so clear that a player is concussed?

And in a week where Max Lynch was forcibly retired by an AFL panel of experts, how do we feel about Paddy McCartin being given permission to again play football by that same panel at the start of last year?

Aliir and Jones won’t play this week. Picture: Getty Images

The science of concussion moves so quickly but this week’s events only confirm McCartin will never grace an AFL field again, with Paul Seedsman and Marcus Adams set to join him and Lynch on the sidelines.

The AFL is yet to kick-start its own long-term research project – The Brain Health Initiative – into CTE nine months after a review found the wanting over its Florey Institute research project.

And the AFL is yet to secure a breakthrough on a concussion compensation fund that it asked the players to pay for as part of the CBA negotiations.

It could also have a range of caveats and exclusions that might not allow players from previous generations to access help.

So while Port Adelaide took the fall this time it is up to everyone in the industry to realise that we cannot accept concussion is football’s defining issues without acting accordingly to protect players.