AFL boss: Send-off rule not needed
AFL boss Andrew Dillon is adamant a send-off rule is “not on our radar” despite calls for change in the wake of St Kilda defender Jimmy Webster’s sickening hit on North Melbourne co-captain Jy Simpkin.
Brownlow Medal winner Gerard Healy has put the idea of a red card and a send-off for such incidents back on the agenda, stating the AFL was one of the few sporting codes in the world that didn’t have the facility for players to be punished on the spot.
He said the availability of an off-field umpire to assess incidents in which rival players were ruled out of games with concussion made the potential for error, long used by the league as a reason not to institute sendoffs, redundant.
Despite two incidents in the past two weeks, the first involving Port Adelaide’s Sam Powell-Pepper, who was given a four-week suspension, Dillon was adamant that AFL rules made it too difficult to send someone off in the heat of the moment.
“It’s not on our radar at the moment,” Dillon said.
“It’s served our game pretty well, the system we’ve got in place at the moment.
“I just think that it would be a massive change, and I think the other part is that, thankfully, these types of incidents are becoming rarer and rarer.”
Dillon said the tribunal ruling on Webster would set “set a precedent” for the season, given the outcry it had caused among the community.
“I think at the start of the year, and particularly after you’ve changed the guidelines or rules, the start of the year does set a base for the year,” he said.