OK, FIRST up, a broken rule of journalism. An office plebiscite of the success or otherwise of the advantage rule of 2011 is overwhelming against the notion of the player having the advantage call - 81 to nil, with one undecided.

Why a broken rule?

Simply, the sample is too small, but the AFL website doesn't have the budget to hire a polling company to gather the right sample.

We're guessing the answer would be the same if we went wider - based on the response of those every week in the bleachers, a proper statistical sample would be somewhere around 1026 to nil.

Have your say in the comments below ↓

Not that the court of public opinion will apply - this season, at least.

AFL general manager of football operations Adrian Anderson pushed the company line at the AFL's mid-season review on Wednesday when he said: "We generally, as policy, review our rules at the end of the year and that's what we'll do this year."

A review is required for two simple reasons, either of which is enough for the rule to be ditched forever:

1. Players have been trained since they fitted their first set of boots to stop on the whistle.

2. The fans are confused, and will remain so while the current model applies. Any law that confuses the fans is not a law worth pursuing.

This rule, and every form of the advantage rule applied in the last twenty years has been flawed for each of those reasons.

Even when the decision was completely in the umpire's grasp, the whistle would stop play, followed by the shout of "advantage" sometimes heard, sometimes not.

Inevitably players would stop, and a minor advantage would be blown out of proportion; and fans would scratch their heads or scream at the unfairness of it all.

The latest version has even greater consequences. The clearest form of its failure is apparent around stoppages, particularly when the whistle blows for a ruck infringement at boundary throw-ins.

It seems that modern ruckmen prefer the concept of enveloping each other anaconda-style, as they await the fall of the throw in, a mode of play generally allowed by the umpires.

Once in a blue moon a whistle will blow, and the umpire will point - which way? Neither ruckman knows, nor the hordes of players surrounding, nor the fans hoping.

In other blue moons, an umpire off the play will blow the whistle, causing total confusion around the area of the decision.

Players concentrating on the play in their space can have no thought to what might be happening behind them.

The flaw in this process is clear - a decision made by an umpire cannot allow an appropriate decision to be made, or understood at the same instant as the umpire's call by any player, anywhere on the field.

So what's the answer, given that the rule's thesis - to provide an earned advantage, rather than bring the play back to square one - is to be fair to the team infringed against?

Being fair is a big question, given that the initial push for an advantage rule in the AFL came about after we all saw it effectively applied in English Premier League soccer in the early days of these matches being seen on TV.

The big difference is that the advantage in the round ball game is almost always ahead of the play - with no confusion, and no possibility of a yardage penalty being applied should the wrong player grasp the implied benefit.

Fair in sport, means fair to both sides in the contest with the rules of golf being the most specific - decisions are made with a view to what is fair to the field at large.

My assessment of what's happened this year, and reflecting on past seasons, is that the advantage rule - in any of its incarnations - has no place in the AFL game; it needs to be modified to allow for a fair benefit to be applied to the team receiving the original free kick. And nothing unfair should apply - or at least outside the bounds of reasonable outcome - to the infringing team.

So what's the answer? Without the resources of the Laws of the Game committee, I can only offer the following as a fan, and long-time observer:

1. the decision must be returned to the field umpire who makes the original call, and he can then have two options to call, applying the one that applies the most advantage:

i)  To apply the free kick at the point at which it has been earned, or

ii)  To apply the free kick at the point in which the ball has been delivered in the moments after the free kick has been paid.

This latter interpretation gives the team in possession a yardage advantage, and also the potential of a structural advantage - with the opposition perhaps ten or 15 metres behind where they would normally set up after a stopped free kick.

This will give the infringed team a fair advantage, not an unreasonable advantage.

In each instance, the free kick is then given as for every other free kick in the Law book - from a static and understood position.

We invite your comments below.

Geoff Slattery is the Managing Editor of AFL Media

The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL