It says something good about modern football that punches to the midriff and the so-called jumper-punch have lately been the talking point. When the popular question being posed about on-field breaches is whether they actually warrant suspension, the game is largely being played in a fair manner.

Which is no small thing considering the physical and emotional stress experienced by players through the course of any AFL match. In that respect, their discipline generally outshines that of some coaches. As for the rest of us, a stubbed toe can cause the cat to be kicked. Players are permitted no such self-indulgence amid events almost as traumatic.

Not that this diminishes the importance of how on-field breaches are dealt with. The game can't afford to turn a blind eye. Kids are learning from their heroes. Give a coach and a bunch of players an inch and, as we know, they'll take a mile.

Then the stakes rise at the pointy end of the season. Geelong's coach, Chris Scott, swallowed hard and accepted the recent suspension of Tom Hawkins, but he expressed the view that a week's holiday for such an offence in September would cause an outcry. A week in September can be major.

Yet the players can scarcely complain of harsh treatment, for successive AFL Match Review Panels have been inclined to err on the side of leniency, sometimes to a fault. It's important the MRP operates with a mindset of duty not just to the accused player and his team, but also to the rest of the football community.

For just as the impact of suspensions at the pointy end of the season is magnified, so it is for acquittals. The latter outcome affects both the team offended against and the one to be faced in any subsequent game.

While it's fashionable to argue that "we want the best players playing in the biggest games", such an approach can give rise to laughable hypocrisy. The AFL has, for some years now, imposed a threat of "double penalties" for offences committed in the Grand Final. Meanwhile, its judicial layers seem inclined to do all they can to acquit players of offences in earlier finals.

In other words: we don't care what you do to each other, just don't trash our brand. Optics!

Over the past couple of decades, Aaron Hamill, Barry Hall, and Shane Mumford are three players who would have given thanks for generous September interpretations.

The Mumford case last September is instructive. He was scrutinised over an incident in the Qualifying Final between GWS and Sydney in which he threw Kurt Tippett to the ground and the Swans' big man appeared to hit his head on the turf. Tippett seemed dazed by the contact. The MRP report the following Monday found no case against Mumford, observing of Tippett that "... his head does not hit the ground at any stage during the tackle".

On replaying that incident, my impression was that it did. When I enquired of the AFL's then football boss, Mark Evans, he told me the MRP was able to view it via higher definition technology than might have been available to others. Tippett's head, he assured me, hadn't hit the turf. And this may be so, but there is a problem of process.

Once upon a time, such visual analysis – so often the crucial component in a judgment on a player – would have occurred at an open hearing. The media would have been present and been able to report to the public on the quality of evidence.

The Match Review Panel meets behind closed doors, in a room at AFL headquarters, and releases a report of its findings. Mark Evans admitted during his time at the AFL that sometimes he would attend the panel's deliberations.

This proximity of football's administration to its judicial process was once unthinkable. Not so long ago, the league enjoyed reminding the public that such matters were handled by an "independent tribunal". And there's still an independent tribunal, it's just that it rarely convenes. This season, not one case has been referred in its direction.

Admittedly, the MRP is the equivalent of the on-the-spot fine system used on our roads. But with footy, the public interest is a two-way street. Issues arise in relation to leniency as well as to punishment. The MRP has delivered just one suspension of greater than two weeks in more than two seasons. Players are snapping up what's on offer. Tribunal members might as well make Monday nights their Bridge night.

In this sense, the system is working brilliantly, as the tribunal had become over-burdened with relatively minor cases. But there is a price. Now, as the almost exclusive dispenser of football justice, the MRP has added responsibility. While it's not a formal tribunal, the need for it to exhibit independence and transparency has risen as the tribunal has become almost redundant.

Just how this is achieved is not exactly clear, but it's not by delivering verdicts based on evidence inaccessible to Joe and Flo Public. If they are denied vital information, perhaps there could be an independent football ombudsman who, on request, can check and report on it.

Nor is it achieved if the head of football attends MRP deliberations. After all, the AFL is a business with annual revenue well beyond half a billion dollars which has lately directed $260 million towards two of its competing entities. In a business sense, some clubs are more equal than others.

The AFL should make clear it has no part in judicial deliberation at any level. If it cares about the public having confidence in its process, its justice must be dispensed independently and free of any hint to the contrary.