Richmond’s Tom Lynch and Gold Coast’s Sam Collins come to grips on Monday night. Lynch was fined for hitting Collins.

The “Footy Frenzy” is over. It’s time to come up for air and work on relationships at home that hopefully aren’t beyond repair after three weeks of strain thrust upon them by the steady stream of football madness.

But before you do, briefly cast your mind back a little over three years to a more carefree time, when the MCG stands were teeming with supporters and Melbourne had not yet been overtaken by Vienna as the world’s most liveable city, let alone forced into lockdown.

Most of us associated the three syllables of “corona” with a cold beer on a warm, sunny day and poor old Richmond was still in the midst of the longest premiership drought in club history. Little did we know what would unfold.

The AFL at that time was fed up with jumper punches and announced a mid-season “reset” on how such incidents would be assessed by what was then a match review panel.

Towards the end of 2018, the league was pondering a “zero tolerance” policy on all punches – jumper punches, gut punches, little jabs etc. – and before the 2019 season a so-called “crackdown” was announced.

All punches were to be penalised with free kicks, fines or worse, and by this time last year, the league was claiming a win, trumpeting statistics that it said proved a drop in off-the-ball hits and other thuggish acts.

But fast forward back to the present and the biggest talking point in football this week – other than the debate over this year’s grand final venue and date – is Tom Lynch’s off-the-ball punch to Gold Coast defender Sam Collins’ ribs.

The Richmond premiership star – who later claimed in a radio interview that he had used an “open handed push” – was caught red-handed swinging his right arm into Collins, who was left gasping for air and later remonstrated with his opponent in a heated contest.

Lynch was fined $1000 for that hit and copped another $1000 sanction for striking Suns ruckman Jarrod Witts in the same match. The twin charges took the Tigers’ collective list of on-field misdemeanours to 14 this season, including six in the past three weeks.

Three of those have been to Lynch, who is developing a reputation and seemingly losing public support, having been charged with misconduct for pushing Brisbane defender Alex Witherden’s head into the turf earlier this month.

One thing the AFL can’t be accused of when it comes to fining players for striking is inconsistency. Fines are the norm on a weekly basis, and players know it.

But it is inconsistent with the AFL’s overall message, and the bottom line is that issuing relatively small fines to players earning six-figure salaries won’t ever free the game of punches.

Instead, the wet lettuce leaf penalties are almost making it appear as if the AFL condones the action.

If the AFL is to completely rid the game of punches, or at least make bigger inroads against them, and set a better example for society in the process, then they should get players where it really hurts.

Translation? Start suspending them for these sorts of hits. You can’t help but wonder if we might have come a lot further already if Barry Hall had been banned for punching Matt Maguire and missed out on a grand final and a premiership all those years ago back in 2005.