Premiership coaches Luke Beveridge and Damien Hardwick are among those railing at the AFL's tribunal tackle crackdown, adamant North Melbourne's Paul Curtis should not be banned for three matches.
Beveridge, Hardwick and Carlton counterpart Michael Voss believe Curtis's penalty was too severe, as backlash from the controversial tribunal verdict continues.
Curtis was banned for rough conduct over a dangerous tackle that concussed Port Adelaide's Josh Sinn.
Beveridge agrees with North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson that Curtis's tackle was a "football action".
The Bulldogs boss said incidents in which players had no intention to hurt opponents did not warrant suspensions.
He likened the Curtis-Sinn incident to Jackson Archer's collision with Luke Cleary, which earned Archer a three-match ban.
"The regulatory framework and the matrix that the AFL use is outdated now," Beveridge told reporters on Friday.
"We need to make sure that we look after the players who are playing the game and their intentions are pure.
"I feel like Paul's were in the action, and he's extremely unlucky."
The Bulldogs' 2016 premiership coach felt the wording and framework of the table of classifiable offences in the tribunal's guidelines weren't fit for purpose.
"It's set up as a really clinical way of responding to a situation that happens on the footy field," he said.
"It needs to be rejigged and thought through in a different way. As I've said, just use the civil law test and balance of probabilities.
"Did someone intend to hurt someone outside the laws of the game? If the answer is no, straight away (it should be) no penalty.
"You don't need a matrix, you don't need any framework."
Gold Coast's Hardwick bemoaned that nothing had changed in the system since an identical ban to GWS's Toby Bedford for a tackle last July.
"If it was a one-week (ban) for a football act, we're probably not having the discussion that we are," Hardwick told reporters.
"It shouldn't be a three-week incident."
Hardwick and his Suns coaching panel scrutinised the Curtis tackle, hoping to teach their players what to avoid.
"And to be perfectly honest, we didn't have an answer," he said.
"It's something that we applaud, it's something that is rewarded with a free kick.
"The reality is accidents are going to happen and we cannot possibly give a player a three-week suspension for a football act that was an accident."
Carlton's Voss said the three-game ban was harsh.
"We all sort of understand that three weeks seems to be hefty, doesn't it? One week seems about right," he told reporters.
"Understand also, the rule is almost a catch-all as well so it's a bit hard to distinguish between getting off and getting three weeks.
"We understand the principles in behind it, the reasons why, because clearly we're trying to take those head knocks away and the chances for concussion to be able to happen.
"But we have also got to acknowledge, there's accidents are going to happen.
"And in that particular circumstance, it looked like someone was carried forward in the tackle, rather than intent to have a double motion."
