The AFL and head high contact

This issue has been bubbling along for a while but seems to have exploded into fully fledged ‘talking point’ after last weekend. Greg Baum wrote a great piece in today’s Age newspaper outlining the difficult faced by the AFL on several fronts. Not only do they want to protect players and try to disassociate our game from the concussion issues growing in the NFL, they also seem to want to find a level of sanctioned toughness that prevents the average punter from a typical, “footy ain’t netball!” refrain.

The Eagles have garnered a lot of attention for the amount of free kicks they receive for head high tackles and especially after North Melbourne coach Brad Scott publicly raised the notion that their players were overly willing to duck into tackles in order to milk a free. This got me thinking about possible solutions that clubs might come up with to try and work around what appears to be a growing propensity of players to play for a free. Maybe the only answer is to jump on the bandwagon, dust off the limbo stick and get loooow.