That's the view of Carlton champion Chris Judd who plays his 250th game on Friday night when the Blues clash with Hawthorn at Etihad Stadium.
Judd told Fairfax Media on Thursday that players now had to think carefully of the consequences when they approach the ball in order to avoid free kicks and perhaps even reports.
He said that in years gone by, "You'd just see the ball and you'd think 'I've just got to get there as quickly as possible, be the first one to get there and no matter what, I'm OK'. So it was much more instinctual."
The 2004 Brownlow medallist said he doesn’t understand the head-first sliding rule and said marking contests and the 'excessive force' contact rules were becoming harder to adjudicate.
''I think we tinker with the rules too much. The rules themselves don't seem to change much. It's just the interpretations of them do. There seems to be some weeks where an interpretation's running hot.
"It looked last week [that] the direction was to put away the whistle, in the games I watched and played in. Great, no problem. But in three weeks' time that will run its course and they'll go, 'Blokes are pushing in too far, now we've got to change it back. Now we need a strong week on the whistle'," he said.
According to Judd, a quick look at the first quarter of the Friday night match each week usually gives players some sort of indication about what aspects of the game umpires might be emphasising that particular week.
