Hypen asked a really interesting question near the beginning of this thread that mostly went unanswered: “Is there and should there be some relaxation of the MRP rules in a prelim?”
There is an underlying assumption that the rules, including with respect to the MRP, should be adjudicated exactly the same in round 1 as they should be in a prelim. People like RM are expressly calling for that. That’s a very black-and-white view, and I’m not sure I agree with it. More to the point, I don’t consider the AFL actually aims to be consistent over the course of the season, and I don’t think it’s in the AFL’s interests to do so.
I think the AFL admin has a number of often competing aims, including in the broad categories of ‘integrity of the game’, ‘player safety’ and ‘commercial considerations’ (including something I’ll call ‘entertainment value’). I think the AFL struggles to keep all of these balls in the air.
It seems to me that the AFL uses the early rounds of the AFL season as an exercise in player behaviour modification. It seems to assess problems it has seen in the previous season – like players getting hit in the head or too much player congestion – and attempts to correct these through either explicit rule changes, or more subtle interpretation changes. The AFL swings hard against these things in the first third of the season rounds to try and get these behaviours out of the players repertoire, but that through a combination of the players adjusting and the umpires relaxing their interpretation, but the end of the season the league seems to reach a more sensible equilibrium. Fans exhaust all of their outrage early in the season, and by the time the finals come around and a ‘new normal’ has been established, it tends to fall away.
In Cotchin’s case, you don’t want players cannonballing in recklessly all season where they can give guys a concussion – that has long-term implications for the league - so you crack down on that sort of thing early in the season. But you also don’t want players rubbed out of Grand Finals for contesting the ball, so you’re inclined to let it slide.
The question is: is there anything wrong with that?
My answer to Hypen is that there is a relaxation (of a number of things) over the season, and there should be.
