Hawthorn senior coach Sam Mitchell has made his thoughts known on the umpires' adjudication of high tackles, claiming players need to be more careful when looking to tackle.
Mitchell's comments come as debate continues within the footballing sphere as to whether umpires are correctly deciding a tackle is high, or if the player being tackled is 'shrugging' his shoulder or 'dropping his knees' in order to play for the free-kick.
The most relevant case-in-point is the play of Collingwood livewire forward Jack Ginnivan, who has made a knack of winning high free kicks in just his second AFL season.
However, after multiple umpiring decisions were made against the 19-year-old during the Magpies' win over North Melbourne last weekend, it would appear that those in green have altered their interpretation of tackles on Ginnivan and players alike.
Quizzed on the topic during the Monday night rendition ofย Fox Footy'sย AFL 360, Mitchell explained his perspective.
"I think personally there's always been ways to attack the footy," Mitchell said.
"It's certainly changed from the start of my career โ you could run into any contest as fast as you wanted. If you hit someone in the head, you gave away a free-kick; it was just considered an accident. Duty of care came in a little bit later.
"Then the slide-in [issue], we used to just dive in as low and as hard as we could, knees first โ it didn't matter. You just had to get out of the way if someone was coming. Then the rule got changed.
"I'm not sure we need to head down that path [for the dropping the knees tactic], but incentivising the right things in the game are important."
Mitchell chose not to lay blame on the recipients of free kicks, but rather on the tacklers for failing to tackle legally, citing the recently-introduced concussion protocols.
"The concept of trying to get hit high to earn a free-kick, it sort of doesn't fit with the concussion protocols, does it?โ he said.
"I think there is some risk in the tackling โ we have to be better at tackling."
Ginnivan currently leads all AFL players in high-free-kicks drawn with 17, closely followed by Sydney's Errol Gulden (14) and Geelong's Joel Selwood (12).
