I think someone once suggested that the prior opportunity element of the holding-the-ball rule should be scrapped, so that anyone who wins possession and doesn’t dispose of the ball gets pinged. To me it seems antithetical to the spirit of the game, but idea is that instead of picking up a ball in congestion players would tap and kick the ball forward or into space rather than picking it up and wearing the tackle.
I always thought they should split the competition in half for pre-season, and for one group apply one set of rules where they remove prior opportunity, and for the other half reward the ball winner much more (ie, get rid of the ‘reward the tackler’ idea and pay more free kicks for early tackles, high tackles and pushes in the back).
I’d be curious to see which games looked better. What would probably happen is for the first set after a game or two players would start shoving the ball into other players hands then tackling them, and in the second set players who won the ball would be diving all over the place like an entire league of Selwoods.
In the end nothing would change, which is possibly a decent result.