THE AFL will review its guidelines around the bump at the end of the year, but is sticking by the recent match review decisions that cleared Ryan Burton and Mark LeCras after they caused accidental head clashes that concussed opponents.
Hawthorn defender Burton was controversially cleared on Monday after a bump that concussed North Melbourne midfielder Shaun Higgins, with match review officer Michael Christian finding that he had executed his bump fairly and could not have reasonably foreseen the subsequent head clash that injured the Roo.
A week earlier, West Coast veteran LeCras was exonerated on the same grounds after he bumped and concussed Gold Coast's Ben Ainsworth.
AFL football operations manager Steve Hocking said on Tuesday there was still a place in the game for the bump if it was executed correctly.
"We workshopped (the Burton decision) long and hard yesterday as you would imagine, there's probably different views out there about that," Hocking said.
"There is still a place within the laws of the game for the bump, and in our view Burton has executed the bump correctly and then there is a secondary motion that happens, which is the incidental head contact.
"We believe that that is still relevant in the game. If we suspend him for that we're throwing the bump out of the game, and I'm not sure we should be doing that."
Asked whether the AFL would review the bump guidelines at the end of the year in the wake of the Higgins and Ainsworth concussions, Hocking said, "Of course, we will."
The AFL's position reflects a shift from its previous guidelines whereby strict liability was effectively introduced in 2013 for players who bumped and caused head clashes after Lindsay Thomas was controversially cleared of a bump that left Ben Reid concussed.
The League adopted its existing guidelines in the wake of Nat Fyfe's two-match suspension in 2014 for rough conduct on Michael Rischitelli, a decision that was widely criticised given Fyfe's bump had been fairly executed and caused only an incidental head clash.
Burton and LeCras both elected to bump rather than tackle, one of six criteria the match review officer considers when assessing a bump's level of impact.
Asked whether the Burton and LeCras decisions sent a message to players that they now had a free rein to bump, Hocking said players could opt to bump rather than tackle but were under an onus to do so fairly.
"I think the game wants the bump retained, I think that's really important," Hocking said.
"In the Lindsay Thomas case, he chooses to make contact with the head (of Scott Selwood, and was referred directly to the Tribunal on a charge of rough conduct).
"I still think there is a duty of care that's required there. Burton, in this case, his duty of care was execution of the bump to a certain standard, which in our view he's ticked all the right boxes.
"Does that mean all of a sudden that it becomes open slather? There were another three or four (incidents) that we reviewed within the games over the weekend that were all bumps as well within the legal area.
"We're comfortable on that adjudication on those guidelines that it's landed where it needs to.
"We're not here to suspend guys for accidents."
