THE DECISION to pay a deliberate out of bounds free kick against Richmond's Jayden Short in the dying seconds against the Western Bulldogs was a borderline call, AFL football operations boss Simon Lethlean says.

With 25 seconds left in Saturday night's match and Richmond trailing by five points, Short pushed the ball forward in attack, before fumbling it out of bounds.

The 21-year-old was penalised for deliberately tapping the ball out deep in his team's forward pocket.

Lethlean said the decision appeared to be correct when watching it in real time.

"Watching the Short one live, I actually thought it was the right call," Lethlean told radio station 3AW on Sunday.

"On replay, it looked a bit harsh, because you can make an argument that he fumbled the ball a bit more than, perhaps, pushed it out."

The umpiring department will review the decision on Monday and speak to the umpire responsible as part of its routine post-round procedure.

Lethlean said the League would continue to instruct umpires to maintain a more stringent interpretation of the deliberate out of bounds rule despite the contentious final-minute decision to penalise Short.

"In that situation in the forward pocket, he had three opponents above him waiting to (ping him) for holding the ball," Lethlean said.

"He may well have thought, 'I'll push it out here, stop the clock and get a stoppage and try and get a goal from that'.

"At the time, the umpire thought he wasn't doing everything he could to keep it in."

After the game, Tigers coach Damien Hardwick said he felt "really sorry" for the whistleblowers because rules required far too much interpretation in the modern game, while Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge likened the deliberate out of bounds interpretation to an episode of Fawlty Towers.

Lethlean labelled Beveridge's post-match comments "a moment of levity" and said he had no issue with the remarks.

The latest controversial umpiring decision comes just days after the AFL Laws of the Game committee clarified the deliberate out of bounds rule.

On Thursday, Lethlean said players who showed "insufficient intent" to keep the ball in play risked having a free kick paid against them.

Western Bulldogs defender Matt Suckling, who applied pressure on Short near the boundary and appealed for the final-minute free kick, said he believed the young Tiger fumbled the ball.

"I just thought he tapped it out of congestion and it rolled out of bounds," Suckling told Fox Footy.

"These days, you've got to have so much intent to keep the ball in (so) I thought I may as well appeal for it.

"It's in their forward 50 so I suppose he's not really trying to get it out but it doesn't look like he's trying to keep it in."