The issue has arisen again in the wake of Adelaide's plight in the final quarter of its 16-point loss to Melbourne at the MCG on Sunday when it was left with no fit players on the bench after injuries to Nathan Bock, Patrick Dangerfield, Trent Hentschel and Kurt Tippett.
In an exclusive interview with afl.com.au, AFL football operations manager Adrian Anderson said the injuries issue was "much bigger than just round three", but it was an area the football operations and laws of the game committee would focus on during the year.
He said the review would examine if there was a link between the increase in interchange rotations and injury, which could result in a range of substitution options being considered.
"[Do] we have two substitutes - six [interchange] plus two [substitutes] - and we could conceivably have a model where there are four interchange, but one or two of them are substitutes," Anderson said.
"You could conceivably have a model where there were five interchange and three of them are substitutes or a whole other range of permutations and combinations."
He said AFL clubs were aware the AFL was seriously considering the introduction of substitutes, but was adamant no rule changes would be made during the 2010 season.
"What we will do is have a thorough look at all of these topics as part of the process for looking at the rules for next year," Anderson said.
The notion of increasing the interchange bench to five or six players, for example, was not a solution.
"There is a danger with increasing the interchange, [because] you will increase the speed of the players out there on the ground and potentially the risk of collision injuries," Anderson said.
Adelaide's Neil Craig and Melbourne's Dean Bailey called for substitutes after round three, but Anderson said it he hadn't received a great deal of feedback from AFL coaches since the weekend.
And he stressed that the AFL's intention had always been to make the game more free-flowing, not quicker.
"Can I make it very clear that this misconception that the AFL has been trying to speed the game up over recent years - [that's] incorrect," Anderson said.
"The AFL has been trying to make the game more free-flowing and continuous, so the ball is in play for 60 per cent of the game, rather than 50 per cent as it was five years ago, when the game was becoming very stop-start."
Anderson said the AFL would also look at tackling, with the numbers per match increasing in recent years.
"It's not on the back of [Patrick] Dangerfield that we're looking at this - the tackling again is one of the things we've noticed is an upward trend," he said.
With St Kilda skipper Nick Riewoldt and Hawthorn recruit Josh Gibson suffering long-term hamstring injuries in round three, Anderson said research would also continue on that injury.
"[There] has been an enormous amount of research and work currently being done on the issue of hamstrings," he said.
"What I can tell you is that hamstring injuries are a major concern. They're the number-one injury affecting AFL players and they've gone up in recent years and at a similar rate to what interchange rates have gone up. We're looking very closely if there is a correlation."
