New AFL football manager Brad Scott has detailed what the league is planning to crack down on in 2022.
Scott took over the role after Steve Hocking resigned earlier this year, with the former North Melbourne coach to now become one of the most influential in AFL house.
He’ll have his hands full, tasked with improving scoring in the league, ensuring consistency with suspensions and clearing up the ‘grey area’ surrounding some rules.
Speaking to the media after the league's competitions committee’s last meeting for the year, Scott confirmed the MRO’s adjudication of head-high bumps and umpire interpretations of free kicks were on the agenda.
The league is hoping to provide clarification on those aspects to clubs by the end of January.
However, while the game has undergone numerous recent changes, including the ‘stand’ rule brought in this year, Scott promised no “material rule changes” to rules in 2022.
“There are not going to be any material rule changes for 2022, however we are looking at certain umpire interpretations, as we’ll slightly tweak those,” he said.
“Not change the rule as such, but there are some instances of certain areas of the game that we feel has crept a little bit and got away from what the rule was originally intended for.”
While rules won’t be changed, the idea of “tweaks” is something being considered, such as the adjudication of high bumps.
“We obviously reserve the right to tweak things because player safety is always going to come first, but we’d ideally like to flag that in November, December and January, rather than in-season,” he continued.
“If you’re late, and you hit the player in the head, you’re going to be in trouble, and there’s broad acceptance of that by clubs.”
The Lions premiership player also flagged similar tweaks to the guidelines of MRO Michael Christian.
“Our job is to make sure Michael Christian as the MRO is really clear on what our guidelines say, and based on all the feedback from the competition committee there might be some tweaks on those guidelines,” Scott stated.
“We acknowledge it’s an ambiguous area and it’s a challenge at times and we’re never going to get 100% right, but we’re going to do our very best to be clear on what the expectations are, so the way it will work is we’ll be really clear with ‘Chriso’ on what the guidelines are, and then it’s up to him to interpret them.”
Scott also had time-wasters in his sights for the upcoming season.
While it’s been a problem the AFL have dealt with for many years, 2021 brought many memorable instances of players noticeably preventing opponents from getting the football, allowing teammates to flood back in defence and contributing to the lower scores.
“We had a section today on time delay and players delaying umpires balling the ball up after they have called a stoppage or delaying getting the ball back to the player who has marked or received a free-kick,” Scott said.
“Again, we think they’re pretty simple things but there has been a bit of creep in those areas over time, and I can’t stress enough that whatever tweaks we make we’ve got to make it clear to clubs and players, and then it’s really important we make it clear to fans.
“A lot of frustration I think from watching footy comes when fans are confused as to what the rules are.
“We’ll take a dim view of players who don’t have the ball, impeding the opposition player picking the ball up, we’ve seen that a lot where players will hover over the ball and not let the player who’s won the free-kick have access to the ball, so umpires will be a lot stricter on that.”
The AFL’s competition committee is chaired by executive GM of football operations Andrew Dillon and now has over 20 members.