There’s more than a hint of bumbling lawyer Dennis Denuto in the chorus of critics that greet the weekly findings of the Match Review Panel.

You’ve heard the popular refrain: Where’s the rational? Where’s the message? Where’s the consistency?

It’s an outrage that Chris Dawes and Daniel Jackson both got one-week suspensions.

How could the heinous actions of Campbell Brown draw only a two-week ban? The AFL must appeal.

How could Jarrad Waite escape unpunished for hoofing a bloke in the nads?

When it comes to specifying the grounds on which the MRP failed, that’s when it begins: It’s the vibe, it’s Mabo, it’s the vibe.

There’s nothing as mind numbing as the carping over the AFL’s judicial system by those who refuse to learn how a highly structured - often to its detriment - system works.

For decades the League had a discretionary system that prescribed a decent penalty for a decent whack. Long-time tribunal chairman Neil Busse thought that to be a two-week suspension.

A panel of three comprising eminent members of society along with former footballers would weigh the evidence, discount the player code of silence and blend some rational thinking to arrive at a verdict and punishment.

Their reward was to be mocked as conducting Chook-Lotto.

The commentariate demanded a rigid system that dispensed with human vagary. A regimented list of felonies to categorise an incident and instantly calculate the corresponding penalty.

The legal mind of Football Operations boss Adrian Anderson made it so.

A table of offenses was conjured. Definitions brought forth. Values allotted. Activation points fixed. And then enough multiplication and division, compound interest and reductions, to placate Treasury.

The Match Review Panel was constituted to apply the legislated grading.

It was, as had been demanded, gloriously black and white. For a grey game.

At the climax of its first season of operation Barry Hall was suspended for the Grand Final. That’s crucial to remember and often ignored.

He pleaded guilty to punching Matt Maguire in the guts. But he successfully had one definition downgraded before the new-look tribunal and, when he took the discount he was entitled to, it amounted to a reprimand.

The outrage, not to mention conspiracy theories that prompted, resonated through the years.

This season the sky has fallen on four different occasions already.

The vibe suggested Waite receive a week for stupidity for kicking on opening night.

Instead the MRP drew on the medical report, which stated Luke McGuane suffered no injury and required no treatment to determine no action was required.

Had Waite been cited he would’ve copped a four-match ban. Low blows attract high points and Waite’s record is littered with carryover points and loadings.

In 2005 Fraser Gehrig got a week for a love tap to the tummy of an opponent. It was decreed to be disproportionate to the crime but the system had no flexibility. Imagine how the Denuto faction would’ve howled had Waite been hit with four weeks.

Brown’s elbow to the head of Callan Ward was labeled thuggery. The lynch mob insisted on six weeks maybe eight. He got two - which was entirely predictable on one glance at the mechanism to arrive at a penalty.

For days the community raged that Brown’s action had been deemed reckless rather than intentional.

“Appeal,” was the call. The very decency and integrity of the game depended on it. Appeal what? Under the express terms of the system there would’ve been no difference in penalty had it been upgraded to intentional.

A week later Dawes was given a reprimand for an innocuous swinging arm into the face of an opponent. Trouble was he’d already received a reprimand. You don’t get two warnings. His previous points conspired to bring forth a one-week suspension.

So the Collingwood forward did what the innocent should. He challenged the case at the tribunal, made a coherent argument and was set free. Plea bargains are for the guilty not the wrongly accused.

This week the MRP did get it wrong. It graded Daniel Jackson’s elbow as reckless rather than intentional. Under the precedent it created with Travis Cloke mid last year Jackson should’ve been suspended for three weeks reduced to two with the plea rather than two down to one.

This is the flaw in the system. The AFL steadfastly refuses to refer cases back to the MRP. It should. Just as the Public Prosecutor routinely appeals what it regards as insufficient sentences handed down by the courts, the AFL should provide a level of check and balance.

Anderson seems to think any appeal would undermine faith in the MRP. I would argue it would have the opposite effect. It would both bolster the independent status of the panel and increase confidence that mistakes will be re-examined and potentially rectified.

The failure to suspend Chris Judd last year after his elbow split open the cheek of Matthew Pavlich is the prima facie case. The MRP reviewed the incident and deemed contact to be insufficient to warrant a charge. Despite the Fremantle captain requiring stitches to the wound.

It was a dreadful assessment. The AFL stood idly by. The ramifications of its inaction were felt on Brownlow Medal night. The system was damaged.

But the scorn being openly encouraged at present is born of ignorance. Before we tear another system down the least we could do is understand how it works.

Gerard Whateley leads the Grandstand AFL team on ABC Radio