The furore this week over free kicks for tackles over the shoulders need not have happened. That it has is down to the AFL's long-standing tradition of using a wrecking ball to remove a mosquito.

Years ago, in response to increasing instances of head injuries, the game's lawmakers declared players' heads sacrosanct. No action that involved contact above the shoulders would be tolerated, not even accidental, unintentional contact. That, we were assured, would protect the players from themselves — except that it didn't.

Players, being competitive beasts, began to devise ways of 'drawing' free kicks for contact over the shoulder.

Famously, the Selwood brothers seemed to patent a muscular shrug that saw a tackler's arms pushed up so that contact above the particular Selwood's shoulder was all but inevitable. Some others devised a sagging of the knees at the critical moment that thwarted a tackler's aim and drew the free kick.

Others, and Selwood J. too for that matter, discovered they could bend down while picking the ball up and drive their heads into opponents and draw a free kick for high contact.

More recently, and demonstrated with extreme panache on Friday night against the Swans, Kangaroo Lindsay Thomas — a past master of the aforementioned strategies — showed that he could back into a trailing tackler and position himself such as to, almost inevitably, draw the free kick for high contact.

Let's start by agreeing that the AFL's intent in reducing the number of head injuries for players at all levels of the sport is a most laudable motive. It's just the way they've gone about it that is dumb.

And let's also agree that the umpires are the not the bad guys here. They're umpiring to the rules they've been given. And it will surprise many readers to read that the umpires are much, much closer than we are in the stands and they can see things that we in the stands can't. It's a shock, right? Most of the time, the slo-mo close-up replays show that the umpires have officiated the rule that they're charged with enforcing. We may not like the decisions they make, but they're doing what they're coached to do.

Remember the wrecking ball and the mosquito? The mosquito is the problem: head injuries to players. The wrecking ball? A zero tolerance approach.

Zero tolerance approaches, especially in Aussie Rules, generally don't work*. Well, they work for a short time, and then the inventive, innovative players and coaches devise strategies to eke an advantage out of the situation.

In contrast to zero tolerance, a nuanced approach gives an umpire, in the case of Aussie Rules, scope to make a decision that suits the context of the situation facing them. A ruck leaps into the air and a free arm accidentally brushes lightly across the opponent's shoulder. In a zero tolerance world, it's a free kick despite it not impeding the opponent. In a nuanced world, the umpire can make an informed, close-up judgement of the contact and whether it actually impeded the opponent.

A couple of years ago we had the same zealous, zero-tolerance approach to hands in the back — which has now, thankfully, downgraded to a more nuanced approach.

It is time for the AFL, its Rules Committee and the umpiring department to come up with an approach that protects players' heads to a reasonable degree, but doesn't provide a source of cheap free kicks for players to farm. A nuanced approach will give us that result, because umpires will be empowered to ignore the players who intentionally draw head-high tackles.

Whatever solution is decided upon, it will only be temporary. The game is in an arms race — teams versus the rules and officials. As one gains a temporary ascendancy, the other finds a way to fight back. Zero tolerance virtually hands players and coaches a manual on how to thwart the intent of a rule.


* We will admit that a zero tolerance approach to the non-wearing of seat belts in cars worked to save lives and change a social norm.