A total of 10 50m penalties were handed out during Thursday night's Carlton-Brisbane Lions clash at Etihad Stadium, and a further six on Friday night in the Hawthorn-Western Bulldogs' clash at the MCG.
Umpires director Jeff Gieschen said there was no additional focus on tightening up on players and giving out the costly penalties despite the sudden inflation in the opening games of the round.
"It wasn't even raised during last week's coaching session about 50m penalties," he told afl.com.au.
"What does get raised every week is consistency, what we've said all year, follow the DVD.
"If you go back to the DVD, some of those 50m penalties that were awarded were exactly what was on the DVD.
"Nothing changed from the previous week; we just saw a spate of it, which can sometimes happen."
All of Thursday night's penalties were deemed to be correct, while just one of Friday night's was classified as unwarranted.
Of the round's 32 50m penalties, only five were assessed as incorrect decisions.
"I think clubs may have looked at the 10 on the Thursday night and thought, 'hang on, what's going on here, we better be very careful with what we do'," Gieschen said.
"From there, I think discipline kicked in and there wasn't the same number of quirky, undisciplined 50m penalties that we saw in the Friday night game."
He also said the Steven Baker-Steve Johnson situation had no bearing on the way the round was umpired, although clubs were put on notice for off the ball incidents.
"If we go reacting to something like that, then all of a sudden we get out of whack and out of consistency with what we normally do," he said.
"All we ever ask the umpires to do is pay what you see."
Meanwhile, Gieschen says the umpires of Saturday's Fremantle-Port Adelaide clash were incorrect in failing to penalise Nick Salter for deliberately rushing a behind.
Salter marked the ball in the Power's defensive goal square during the clash at Subiaco and did not hear umpire Michael Jennings call to "play on" after the ball failed to travel 15 metres.
Fremantle's Hayden Ballantyne, who did hear the call, then pursued Salter, who moved backwards to take the kick and stepped over the goal-line in the process, still believing he had legally marked the ball.
"The umpire processed that he would give Salter the benefit of the doubt based around that he didn't intentionally try and rush the behind," he said.
"However, there is an expectation that once the umpire calls "not 15, play on", the players must play to his call and instruction. In this case, Salter didn't hear or elected not to hear and walked backwards.
"Technically in this situation, the umpire has made an error and it should have been deemed that it was a deliberate rushed behind and a free kick awarded to Ballantyne in the goal square."
