Some players, coaches and supporters have publicly ridiculed the commission. They demand that rugby league will be a reduced sport and spectacle now that the bump-into-oblivion has been laid to rest.
Sonny Bill Williams, considered a guru of the now outlawed assault, has tweeted: "You need good timing and technique to pull off a shoulder charge." But wait there's more: "Simply put, if you can't do it don't try - this is league not tiddlywinks!"
This is instructive for two reasons. Williams has glorified the charge as some sort of science - which it isn't. Up until this week it has been legalised thuggery. And second, Williams thinks there is a bunch of rugby league supporters wandering about confused by the lack of small, coloured discs in NRL games. Poor sods. Poor Sonny Bill.
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If rugby league needs the shoulder charge to stay relevant and exciting then it is a sport without guile or value. And possibly a future. Supporters and players too easily confuse violence with ruggedness. There is nothing tough about the shoulder charge. No courage is required to run hard at a player who is blind to the coming assault and therefore defenceless.
The decision to make the shoulder charge illegal showed good resolve from the new commission. It was never going to be a popular verdict within the rugby league community. With the appointment of Dave Smith as chief executive yesterday, rugby league has finished the year with energy and a genuine sense of leadership.
It is not a boast the AFL could make. The national draft held on the Gold Coast on Thursday night was the final play of the year other than some mopping up with the pre-season and rookie draft next month. It signals the end of the 2012 football year and beginning of the 2013 dreaming. The flood of new, young blood through the draft gives everyone new hope.
The AFL administration, however, will review a most uneven and unhappy year. It began weakly with the announcement in February of a $23.6 million loss for 2011. The expansion funding of the Gold Coast and GWS savaged the AFL bank book. It has ended with two investigations that run deep into the integrity of the league. Melbourne faces allegations that it deliberately lost matches to improve its draft pick and Adelaide, its chief executive officer Steven Trigg and player Kurt Tippett face charges of fiddling with the draft and fiddling the salary cap books.
In between there has been the Wangaratta fiasco, which saw a pretentious Essendon attempt to fly to the Victorian town for a practice match rather than take a bus. The plane could not land because of bad weather and Essendon drowned in its own hubris. The AFL awarded the match to St Kilda.
Melbourne's talented indigenous forward Liam Jurrah was charged with serious assault and recruiter Matt Rendell was sacked by Adelaide after it was learnt he had said that it might be necessary to overlook an indigenous player who did not have a white parent. Rendell made the comment to AFL community manager Jason Mifsud while explaining the difficulty of recruiting indigenous footballers.
In April, Melbourne was forced to dump its major sponsor after the company's chief executive Ben Polis ran a stream of racist comments on social media. As the season rolled on Matt Primus was sacked as Port Adelaide coach and Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson was suspended by a junior league for abusing a teenage umpire.
Tom Liberatore, son of 1990 Brownlow Medallist Tony, was suspended by the Bulldogs for four weeks after he was found by police drunk and in possession of an illicit drug. Stephen Milne was fined after a homophobic comment directed at Collingwood's Harry O'Brien. When it was all over, attendance had fallen to its lowest level since 2006.
The biggest loser in a poor year has been the AFL Commission itself. While we await the results of inquiries into Melbourne and Adelaide it is the performance of chairman Mike Fitzpatrick's board that has been most disappointing.
The Melbourne probe is looking at tanking in season 2009. It was well known back then that Melbourne and other teams had deliberately under-performed to improve their draft picks. The AFL said it wasn't happening.
Even when the then coach Dean Bailey said after his sacking in 2010 that he had coached in a manner that would help the club get the draft picks it wanted, the commission denied the existence of tanking.
And when Brock McLean, a former Melbourne player, admitted on pay-TV that Blind Freddy could have seen what was at play with the Demons in 2009, the AFL again denied that tanking was taking place on Fitzpatrick's watch. Here was an administration and its commission that fundamentally did not understand the sport it was chosen and paid to govern.
The Adelaide-Tippett saga should be finalised next Friday when player, club and chief executive get to state their cases. But the AFL has only just stumbled on to the Tippett story he had an understanding with the club that he would be released for a second round draft pick although it has been common knowledge for more than a year.
The AFL Commission has been lauded as the best leadership and governance in Australian sport. Maybe we have been so besotted with its qualities because there was precious little to compare it with. Racing is a mess with a national body that is without muscle. The NRL was compromised by the involvement of News Ltd and rugby union is working its way through the 19th century.
Now that the ARL Commission has a full understanding of its business and sport we might just see the AFL Commission for what it really is. Both plodding and pompous.
AFL falling apart
