The AFL has published a rule in their 2025 AFL Victoria Country Handbook that provides for the possibility of an extra penalty being added to what is determined as a \u201cbase sanction\u201d under the rule.<\/p>\n
Under the heading in Appendix 1 \u2013 Reportable offences:<\/p>\n
Rule 7c \u2013 Reportable offences in a Grand Final (on page 109), it states:<\/p>\n
The controlling body or Tribunal (as applicable) may apply (at its absolute discretion) a loading of up to 100% in relation to the base sanction for any reportable offence committed during a grand final.<\/p>\n
Guidance note: For example, if the usual base sanction for an offence was 2 matches and the controlling body applied the full 100% loading, the base sanction would become 4 matches. An early guilty plea discount would then apply to the 4-match base sanction, i.e. 4 matches reduced to 3 matches if the plea is accepted.<\/p>\n
The rule is aimed at trying to reduce the number of incidences where players attempt to injure opposition players to put them out of the game.<\/p>\n
It is also aimed at stopping \u201call in\u201d brawls occurring in grand finals.<\/p>\n
A good example was in the Kyabram District League\u2019s under-18 grand final last year when a nasty brawl occurred at the end of the game.<\/p>\n
According to information received from the towns of the competing clubs, a total of 64 weeks\u2019 penalties were handed out by the tribunal for the offences by using this rule by applying only 50 per cent extra penalties.<\/p>\n
It would have been a more disastrous result if the tribunal had used the 100 per cent option.<\/p>\n
Players in all grand finals should understand that the rule is available to be used in their competition this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The AFL has published a rule in their 2025 AFL Victoria Country Handbook that provides for the possibility…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-108107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}