Hits on notice in AFL rules crackdown as coaches’ biggest bugbear fixed

A serious bugbear of AFL coaches has been addressed, with the substitute rule among changes for 2024, which includes a crackdown on overzealous smothers like the one that resulted in Melbourne’s Angus Brayshaw being badly concussed.

That bump, in which Collingwood defender Brayden Maynard left the ground to try and smother a kick in the 2023 finals series, only to collide with Brayshaw, would result in a suspension under the stricter interpretation ticked off by the AFL Commission.

Amid a suite of tweaks for the upcoming season, coaches and other club staff will be banned from “whistling from the interchange bench” as a result of “excessive whistling” last season.

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The tribunal crackdowns, however, loom as most significant with the AFL labelling them “substantive changes … in relation to smothers, run-down tackles and striking, aimed at making the game safer for players”.

When it comes to smothers, players who elects to leave the ground and make “reasonably foreseeable high contact with an opponent that is at least Low Impact” will be deemed to be careless at a minimum, bringing suspension in to play.

Having deemed chase down tackles which result in injury when force is used an “area of concern in 2023” the tribunal guidelines have been amended so that there may now be run-down tackles that are dangerous and which constitute a reportable offence, particularly when “excessive force” is used.

The guidelines for the grading of striking have also been strengthened to increase the onus on players to not commit a strike even when seeking to fend and push their opponent, much like Richmond superstar Dustin Martin’s “don’t argue” fend-offs.

Now where a player intends to forcefully push or fend an opposition player off the ball and the effect is that the player “strikes” their opponent, the strike will usually be graded as intentional rather than careless.

The Commission also opted to stick with four interchange players and a single substitute for 2024, despite a push from coaches to make it five interchange players.

But in a positive tweak, the substitute will not have to be named until an hour before matches, when official team sheets are lodged.

That will allow clubs to name 23 players in their squad, and avoid having to name just 22, and omit a player who may end up playing as the sub.

Carlton coach Michael Voss labelled it “one of the craziest rules I’ve ever seen”.

“The fact you have to omit someone to put someone back in I just don’t know why he can’t be named the 23 but it is what it is,” he said last year.

Geelong captain and AFL Players Association President, Patrick Dangerfield, said he fully supported the crackdown on rules relating to playing protection when it comes to concussion, adamant that the “evolution around concussion” continued.

“I think the AFL has been really cognisant of that, we’ve certainly been collaborated at stages around certain things, not all, but certain things, which is important. You need to have players on board with that sort of stuff,” he said recently.

“But I think there is going to continue to be an evolution around concussion, around how we adjudicate certain incidents that happen, some that are footballing actions, some that aren’t and some that sit in a grey area of, ‘it’s a footballing action, but it something we need to remove for the betterment of the game and player safety’.

“There’s going to be times where you feel like you’re stiffed and that’s just going to have to be okay. What’s paramount is once you remove yourself from the emotion of the game as a player, your health is the most important thing while you’re playing, but more importantly once you’re finished.