Alastair Clarkson calls out AFL’s ‘enormous dilemma’

The premiership winner stated he was perplexed by the suspensions handed all the way down to gamers this season who had tackled their opponents to the bottom in a single movement – a unique method to the sling sort out that gamers are properly conscious they can’t execute with out penalties.

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Essendon captain Zach Merrett and Collingwood’s Taylor Adams are each interesting one-match suspensions for tackles which led to their respective opponents’ head hitting the turf.

But Clarkson, now in command of North Melbourne, stated these incidents and the sort out by Hawthorn’s Will Day on Brad Close in spherical 4, which earned the Hawk a suspension, had confused gamers and coaches.

“It’s a difficult one for the game, you’ve got these issues around concussion that they obviously need to be very, very mindful of, but we can’t lose sight of the fact of just how difficult our game is,” Clarkson stated.

“In some of these incidents – the Will Day one from Hawthorn, he was just in the process of tackling a player, and if you’re tackling you’re sometimes going to lose balance.”

The Kangaroos coach stated the league might have to change the umpires’ interpretation of a authorized sort out if it continued to crack down on tackles the place a participant’s arms are pinned.

“The whole idea of tackling is to actually pin their arms so they can’t dispose of the football, because the ball is in their hands,” he stated.

“So you want to pin the arms but if you pin their arms, there’s going to be a risk there if they fall to the ground because they lose balance, there’s sometimes going to be head contact with the ground.

“It’s nearly to the point where we’re going to say you can’t even tackle the arms now, because everyone who gets tackled and their arms pinned, they’re at risk of hitting their head on the ground.”

Clarkson stated gamers and coaches confronted an “enormous dilemma” on the sphere as well as the one posed by concussion considerations for gamers, and he stated North Melbourne might have to regulate its coaching program as a result of stricter MRO interpretation.

“It’s an enormous dilemma for the players and coaches just on how to go about it, because at the minute, we’re having three (suspensions) a week,” he stated.

“It was very definitive what it looked like when there was two motions, grabbing a player and then slinging him, now these are just motions of actually tackling the player.

“80 per cent of the time the player gets away with it because the player doesn’t fall over and hit his head, 20 per cent of the time or less than the player is at significant risk … that’s going to be a challenge for everyone in the game.”