Three rule changes the AFL should make over summer according to club great

Fremantle great Paul Hasleby believes this is the time of the year where the AFL should be sitting down to determine key rule changes for the 2025 season, naming a few that should be amongst them.

The AFL has not shied away from making changes over summer in previous years, and Hasleby firstly looks to premiership medals and the situation surrounding Brisbane ruckman Oscar McInerney.

Brisbane coach Chris Fagan revealed he gave his premiership medal to the ruckman, who suffered a shoulder injury in the Preliminary Final.

Hasleby isn’t firm on what the exact number should be, but believes there should be a threshold of games played in a season that qualifies a player to receive a premiership medal.

“You know what I get frustrated with? When everybody gets frustrated about things happening in a footy season when it’s too late to change. In the AFL, now is the time to make change before you get halfway through the year,” Hasleby told SEN WA’s The Run Home.

“Once you get halfway through the year, like we saw with the ineligibility of Isaac Heeney, the rules are in place.

“I want to campaign to the AFL right now to start to make some change. What we did see yesterday was the premiership medal given to Oscar McInerney by Chris Fagan. I loved this.

“Given that, I think this needs changing. This is the time. When you’ve got a player of his importance who played 25 games, got injured in the Prelim, came back on in the Prelim to allow the to get into the Grand Final.

“I’m not sure what the parameters are around this, but surely we could get to a point where if you played 15 games of the season, you’re deserving of a medal.

“It might only mean another three or four players get it, but it means a lot. I have a couple of examples of two players that have been aggrieved by this.

“Taylor Adams at Collingwood got injured late last year, played 19 games. Guess what he did, he left. His heart was broken.

“John Noble was the same. He played 20 games in the premiership year and played for another season and got back into the team, but it did come out that his heart was broken and he’s left.

“I’m all for this one. If you do play a certain amount of games, you should be eligible for a premiership medal.

“If you go through the numbers, you’re only talking about one or two extra medals per season.”

The second rule change Hasleby would like to see is shifting Brownlow eligibility so any player banned for one or two weeks remains able to win the award.

“Brownlow eligibility. Let’s do it right here, right now. I don’t think anybody would be upset by this change,” he said.

“I believe that if the suspension is less than three games, they should remain eligible, and it takes the pressure off the Tribunal and the MRO.

“Isaac Heeney should have been eligible to win the Brownlow Medal. For what he did, and the way suspensions have changed in our game, the AFL needs to sit down and make a change there.”

Hasleby would also like to see an NBA-style ‘max contract’ introduced, which would put an end to the super long-term deals we’ve seen in the AFL in recent years.

“The third one is a five-year max contract. I’ve been strong on this. I think it is getting out of control,” he said.

“It’s not great for the clubs. They have lost all of their power, but I also believe it helps equalisation.

“The reason I say that is if you have a club down the bottom that hasn’t spent most of their salary cap, they can stump up better money than the clubs up the top.

“But once the clubs at the top can then put it over eight years, it becomes harder for the bottom clubs to get that advantage.

“I think that would help to see some players choose to go to the bottom clubs.”

Listen to the rest of Paul Hasleby’s rule change ideas below