As confusion rules in the AFL, there is urgent need for a rewrite

Here’s one decision the AFL can make that no one could dissent. At season’s end, it should hold a kind of constitutional convention to overhaul every aspect of the laws of the game and the judicial system that is meant to reinforce them.

This jurisdiction is failing, and it won’t fix itself. Nor will hastily devised patches and plugins work. Everyone is confused – players, coaches, umpires, fans. We’re all Joe Biden.

“Only need to see the reaction from footy fans (most weeks) that the tribunal system throws up too many inconsistent and frankly baffling decisions,” tweeted Swans legend Jude Bolton on Tuesday. “Short of a complete overhaul, there needs to be a solid review at the end of the season to determine what we want the game to look like.”

Toby Bedford was suspended for three games for this tackle on Tim Taranto.Credit: Channel Seven

It began with an intention to insulate the game against concussion. It was laudable and – given the legal implications – financially prudent, but also utopian. The game can be and has been made safer, but it cannot be made foolproof.

Some initiatives have been logical, but others appear knee-jerk, ad hoc and unilateral. Interpretation of rules governing tackling and holding the ball change with the wind.

Between no tackle at all and a tackle that pins both arms and risks causing concussion, the acceptable middle ground appears to have become the once-reviled chicken-wing tackle. Commentator and premiership player David King says it is now being coached, and fears an imminent spate of shoulder injuries.

When filtered through the judicial system, the law of unintended consequences rules. As colleague Peter Ryan noted, Greater Western Sydney’s Toby Bedford would have been better punching Tim Taranto in the stomach or pulling him around the neck and copping a fine or a one-match suspension than his once-textbook tackle that cost him three matches.

Speaking on Perth radio on Wednesday, Fremantle star Caleb Serong said he understood the stricture on blatant sling tackles, for instance, but as a smaller player wondered what he was supposed to do. One slip and both players miss at least the next match, one concussed, the other suspended.

“If it’s going to get to a point where we can’t take anyone to the ground, it’s going to be hard,” Serong said. “I feel for these guys where they’re trying to lay a tackle - and it ends up in a three-week ban.”

More broadly, the AFL tries to finesse the rules seemingly almost weekly, all under the rubric of a more continuous game. Last weekend, unannounced, it was a crackdown on kicks that may or may not have travelled 15 metres.

Charlie Cameron was suspended for three matches for this tackle on Liam Duggan.Credit: AFL Photos

Meantime, previously tightened rules grow loose again. A couple of years ago, a roll of the eyes on the mark was likely to attract a 50-metre penalty for dissent. Now players en masse throw their arms to the sky and the umpire merely sets the mark, po-faced.

Once, this was the business of a rules committee, long since disbanded. Now reinterpretations come down to the field like tablets, not to be confused with prohibited substances. “There is pandemonium in the game at the moment,” said King. “The rules have never been greyer right now. Players are living in this grey area.”

It’s not just players. Rafferty’s rules have made what was already a difficult game to umpire nearly impossible. Recently, a group of journalists were shown around the ARC, fitted with goggles that took them into the heart of the action and asked to make a couple of the instant decisions that umpires must make hundreds of times in a game. They came away suitably humbled. Two eyes each was not nearly enough.

It’s double jeopardy for the umpires, who even as they apply this week’s rules correctly are booed because to the crowd their latest decision is intuitively wrong. Don’t doubt the input of the crowd. Players say it has an impact on them, so how can it not affect umpires? Evidently, the safest free kick to pay is none. More umpires than ever are paying fewer free kicks than ever.

Who’d be an umpire?Credit: AFL Photos

The solution cannot be merely to revert to a previous regime. It’s impossible to reconstitute a broken egg. The only way is forward, but sensibly. The AFL under Andrew Dillon purports to be more collaborative, so here’s its chance.

A panel should include players, a la cricket, and some coaches, but not a majority. Even the broadest minded coach is necessarily self-serving. Select administrators, media and fans should round it out. Its mission should be to present a coherent rules infrastructure that gives umpires and the MRO and tribunal some chance of applying consistently. It’s a tall order, but imperative.

AFL is methodical madness, so its governance can never be perfect, but nor does it have to be as obtuse as it is now.

Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.