There are perhaps only a few football greats who can offer an opinion about an aspect of the game and automatically make the entire industry sit up and take notice.
Leigh Matthews is certainly one. Every comment the champion player and coach makes carries considerable weight. And for some time, he's been hot on the idea of a send-off rule in AFL football.
Matthews was vociferous in his support for a send-off rule early last year, when St Kilda's Jimmy Webster delivered a brutal hit to North Melbourne's Jy Simpkin in a practice match. And was again on Monday night, after Hawthorn's Conor Nash concussed Geelong's Gryan Miers with a swinging right arm at the MCG.
"Geelong have lost Miers concussed, so they're one man down, and of course Nash stays on the ground," Matthews said on Fox Footy's "On The Couch".
"I just think there has to be a system in place for an incident like this. It's obvious that he's reported and he's going to get suspended, but it's an evening up the numbers thing for me. Geelong have only got 22 players to be active and Hawthorn have got 23."
But while I find myself more often than not agreeing with everything the footy legend has to say about the game, this is one of those rare occasions I don't. And there's some irony about why not.
True to his famous pragmatism, Matthews isn't climbing aboard any moral high horse, though many would. For him, it's all about game integrity, and the removal of one player from one team via illegal means leading to a numerical disadvantage. But I reckon it's that same pragmatism which in this case actually weakens his argument.
Were this just a case of simple morality, and the evidence at hand an even more callous, calculated and unnecessary hit on a player than Nash's blow to Miers, then the principle at stake would rightly supersede the practicalities surrounding it.
But there's two critical points here. One is that while Nash's strike of Miers was nasty and will rightly earn him a considerable spell on the sidelines, even that can't fairly be described as the sort of brutal, deliberate assault generally offered up as a reason the AFL should introduce a send-off rule.
Gryan Miers was helped off the field following this incident involving Conor Nash.#AFLCatsHawks pic.twitter.com/Io8l0t0gF2
— AFL (@AFL) April 21, 2025
Whatever Nash was attempting, the beginnings of a tackle or bump, it was a football manoeuvre gone wrong. And that, indeed, is what practically every indiscretion committed on an AFL ground is in the modern game, not a callous and calculated act.
It was the same with the most recent in-season incident which sparked widespread calls for the introduction of a send-off rule, Geelong's Tom Stewart's late and high bump on Richmond's Dion Prestia in 2022.
READ: ESPN's writers debate the merit of a 'red card' in the wake of Stewart-Prestia
Can people even recall violent incidents of the last decade or so which couldn't be credibly argued were at least attempts at legitimate football acts?
Andrew Gaff's strike on Andrew Brayshaw probably qualifies as one, and rightly cost Gaff a part in West Coast's 2018 premiership, but that aside, the last absolutely inexcusable king hit I can recall in an AFL game happened all the way back in 2008, when Sydney's Barry Hall KO'd West Coast's Brent Staker, an awful moment which earned the key forward a seven-game suspension.
Which, basically, is the second point here. Seventeen years ago is a pretty long time between drinks.
And if we agree that the unprovoked assault on a player not expecting a blow has essentially been stamped out, what's the need to introduce legislation, unless we're prepared to bring it in even for genuine-football-acts-gone-wrong?
Which I reckon is a pretty slippery slope given the strength of today's players and the velocity of their movement and contact, which means only a tiny miscalculation can have serious consequences
Surely, if a player is to be forcibly removed for the remainder of a game, we'd want to be pretty satisfied his indiscretion was an act of inexcusable violence and not the result of an error of timing?
Matthews also bases his argument for a send-off rule around the possibility of an act of violence helping determine a Grand Final.
"I know it's got its complexities (a send-off rule), but this will happen in a Grand Final one day and if it happens in a Grand Final -- this exact incident -- I bet you the send-off rule will be seriously considered."
READ: How a send-off rule could work in the AFL
The AFL has, of course, indulged such reactionary thinking before. But again, what are the precedents? Funnily enough, the two which most immediately spring to mind involve Matthews the coach.
In the 1990 Grand Final, his Collingwood and Essendon fought a wild pitched battle at the quarter-time break, which left his star forward Gavin Brown concussed and temporarily removed from action.
But he, Brown and the Pies had the last laugh, as they focused on the football while the Bombers played the man, and in 20 minutes of madness gave away a series of costly free kicks, 50-metre penalties and goals which effectively cost them any chance of a win. Thus, it was effectively the perpetrator and not the "victim" which paid the price.
Then, 15 years later, in 2004, Matthews was Brisbane coach when his spearhead Alastair Lynch, who'd injured a quad early and knew his day was effectively already done, threw a wild flurry of punches at his opponent Darryl Wakelin, fortunately, none connecting.
Lynch, who was retiring anyway, and whose team lost, was suspended for 10 games and fined $15,000. The AFL also announced that it was double the length of suspensions incurred in a Grand Final as a deterrent.
We've had a number of incredibly close, nail-biting Grand Finals in the modern era in which individual players and isolated moments of brilliance have won premierships for their teams and cost them for opponents.
But that doesn't seem to have tempted those opponents to "take out" those stars in a cynical "whatever it takes" mindset to claim victory.
I'm not claiming we should never legislate simply to avoid the possibility of something untoward happening. But I do think there needs to be more frequent evidence that something is a danger before we act to prevent it.
And as much as I respect Leigh Matthews and all his opinions on football, I don't think the Nash-Miers incident nor any isolated moments of violence in the game of the modern era are nearly enough of a precedent to justify such a significant rule change.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.