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The push-in-the-back rule has largely been abandoned, and it’s time the AFL takes action
Gerard Healy • March 3rd, 2025 8:27 pm
After the pre-season competition, there are now four players likely to miss games with injuries sustained from pushes, some multiple weeks, and there's no sugarcoating it. The AFL's incompetence is largely responsible.
Is that too strong? Well, I don't think so, because they've ignored the bleeding obvious for years.
The push in the back is out of control and has been for a long time.
Seven years ago, when he was football manager of the AFL, Steve Hocking - who I'm a big fan of -- abandoned the hands-in-the-back rule.
Now, given that it was working so well, it was a shock at the time, and I've never been able to quite understand his motives or rationale.
But whatever the case, I'm sure he wouldn't have envisaged it morphing into the disaster it is at the present time.
Since that day in 2018, we have lost over 30 per cent of push-in-the-back frees in marking contests, let alone those that occur in the ruck. Yep, 30 per cent.
Despite many pleas for change to those in charge and highlights on Fox Footy over the years of embarrassing non-decisions for push in the back, those running the game remained oblivious and negligent in their inaction… some scoffing dismissively that you'd even raise it. Frustrating in the extreme.
Gillon McLachlan, Andrew Dillon, Laura Kane, Josh Mahoney and our new umpire's boss Steve McBurney… they've all got their fingerprints on this football crime.
When challenged recently about the push in the back by a third party, McBurney said dismissively, I'm told, we simply haven't got a problem with the push in the back.
Well, you could have fooled me, Steve. Perhaps ask the injured players.
Collectively, their foolhardy inaction has created a disastrous environment on the field at present that has caused the 4 injuries including 1 broken jaw, 2 concussions, and an AC joint in just two rounds of pre-season footy.
I just wonder if Josh Mahoney - currently now in charge of all matters on the field - is laughing tonight, as he did when I raised it with him on air last Brownlow night.
If you get the picture, I'm pissed off with this issue - you're on the money.
From a discussion with Andrew Dillon recently, I'd conclude that the current CEO accepts that there's a problem.
But accepting a problem and doing something about it are two entirely different scenarios.
Perhaps I read him wrong, for nothing's changed yet, and we've seen that it's got decidedly worse.
For over a century, the game has protected the player who takes the front position. It's a time-honoured rule of the game the push in the back, to reward the player in front and not the bloke who sweats out the back.
Yet in the last seven years, it's been corrupted more and more where we’ve ended up in a situation where the players know the enforcement of this rule is so loose that they are taking the mickey so greatly, they're now just shoving players in packs, as happened on the weekend.
Remember, 30 per cent of free kicks for pushing the backs have evaporated, and it's now got to a new level of total mayhem in packs that we've had 4 injuries.
Finally, some people, former players included, are belatedly calling for change, and change before the season starts, but it's well and truly after the ambulance has bolted.
Commentators too have behaved like accomplices, like frogs in water that slowly turned up to boiling so that they perish, not recognising the temperature change.
Illegal push in the backs are too often described by these commentators as edging a player under the ball as if it's okay, conditioned to ignore the free kick.
Just like the frog, the game itself gets boiled.
I was watching the 1969 Grand Final last week when footy was more like kick to kick, pack to pack. It was amazing. No one dared put hands in the back in marking duels. No one. And amazingly, there were more marks and goals.
It just wasn't done - because the free kick was always paid.
This is clearly a coached and learned behaviour, so it can clearly be unlearned.
Well, my guess though, is meaningful change is not going to come from the football department anytime soon, whose heads have been long buried in the sand, or perhaps elsewhere.
Or the umpiring department as well, because they have been negligent for years and have declared their position already.
It's not going to come from a sleepy Commission, too distracted by social issues, to actually know that there's been a longstanding problem at play on the ground.
So, Andrew Dillon, the ball's in your court, and your court alone it seems.
Yep, the TW Sherrin is spinning ferociously in the Oval Office warning you it's time to act.
If this situation is to change and the integrity of the game be restored, someone simply has to grab the reins and lead on this, like the decisive action from Chairman Mike Fitzpatrick 15 years ago, who demanded of Adrian Anderson that the man in front be protected in a time-honoured way, which saw the introduction of the no hands in the back rule.
But at the very least, someone in power needs to demand an immediate return to far more stringent enforcement of push-in-the-back in the short-term, and an immediate warning that these reckless push-in-the-backs are reportable offences that will carry severe penalties, as suggested by Matthew Lloyd last week.
But folks, don't hold your breath, for even with 4 injuries, the water must not have boiled over yet at AFL House, for nothing has come from the hall of power on this very important issue, and that is a surprise.
