Hawthorn premiership coach Alastair Clarkson has used the sickening clash of heads between Kangaroo Shaun Higgins and his own player Ryan Burton to call for action on congestion.
An unaware Higgins ran into Burton and came off second-best in the third quarter of North Melbourne's 28-point victory on Sunday.
The Roos' reigning club champion, whose wife gave birth to their first child only hours earlier, remained motionless for some time before eventually being taken to Epworth hospital.
Burton, who made a split-second decision to bump rather than tackle, could be in trouble with match review officer Michael Christian.
"There are head clashes in the game all the time," Clarkson said.
"What we've got to do is try to reduce the congestion, and I've been on this for a long period of time. Not that that one was so much about congestion – that was just a blindside situation.
"But a lot of players have the clashing of the heads when they're both chasing a ball.
"We've got to reward, and I know Leigh Matthews and others hate it … the game should be about the ball carrier, but at the minute, in my view, the game is 95 per cent about the ball carrier and five per cent about the bloke that's trying to chase him.
"I'm not talking about turning it around so that it's 95 per cent the chaser, but reward the tackler more. There are just so many incorrect disposals in the game of AFL footy.
"We're treating the game as if we're playing a group of under-12s and they don't know how to kick, mark and handball."
Clarkson attended the draw between St Kilda – the Hawks' next opponent – and Greater Western Sydney on Saturday and was frustrated to see the umpires fail to reward several tackles.
"(There were) five opportunities within 20 or 30m from goal, where Giants players had the ball and, in my view, incorrect disposal from good tackling pressure, but it's not paid," he said.
"Just pay the free kicks. In each of those cases, they become five ball-ups.
"Now Saints don't mind, really – they've got a ball-up at least in their front end and can set up their defence behind it.
"But, by and large, that should be a free kick to them and goal and actually educating players that they have to dispose of the ball correctly."
Clarkson believes the reason those free kicks he questioned weren't paid was the preference to "protect the player with the ball".
"If you get rid of it the right way, then you won't have to worry about being done for a free kick," he said.
"But what's happening is it just draws more (players) into the ball and we're getting more and more of these types of incidents in footy.
"How many guys are we seeing going off with blood rules and clash of heads and those sorts of things? I think we can avoid something there."
