Western Bulldogs players check in on teammate Luke Cleary after he was concussed on the weekend. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

More than 34,000 people at Marvel Stadium held their collective breath late in Saturday night’s clash between the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne.

With just under seven minutes remaining, Kangaroos defender Jackson Archer and Bulldogs youngster Luke Cleary were involved in a sickening collision – the kind that makes one put their hands over their face. It was footy’s version of a car crash.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident, it actually looked like Archer came off worse for wear as he clutched at his right leg, nursing a possibly serious knee injury or maybe even a broken leg.

But as the dust settled, and Archer eventually hobbled the pain away, it became clear that Cleary was the one who came off second-best.

As the pair was chasing after the same loose ball, Archer’s knee had hit Cleary flush in the head, knocking him out cold immediately.

A lengthy delay ensued as Cleary was first attended to by medical staff before eventually being stretchered from the field via medicab. It was a very concerning situation.

Thankfully, the 23-year-old has been cleared of any structural damage to his head or neck and is in good spirits after being discharged from hospital.

For all intents and purposes, it looked like an accident as a result of two courageous young players fighting for the ball.

After the game, Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge even went into bat for Archer and didn’t think the backman would be in danger of copping a suspension

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Beveridge said.

“Sometimes when a player’s running that fast for the ball and then a player ends up on the ground … the slide-under (the knee) rule is there as well, so you don’t know which way it’s going to go.

“I imagine it’s going to be OK.”

Less surprisingly, North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson shared a similar viewpoint.

“It was just an unfortunate collision of the game,” Clarkson said.

“It’s a really interesting one. I didn’t really know what the free kick was going to be. Was it going to be for too high? Or was it going to be for taking the legs out of the opposition?”

The experienced coaches raised very good points. There is such a grey area now with such incidents, few people would’ve batted an eyelid if Cleary was deemed to be the transgressor.

Yet despite the part Cleary played in the clash by going to ground, Archer has been slapped with a three-match suspension by match review officer Michael Christian. It was deemed to be careless conduct, severe impact and high contact. In a nutshell, this is absolute gobbledegook.

Firstly, of course the impact was severe. Both players played their role in ensuring that was the case. And Archer hardly escaped unscathed either as he was limping heavily for quite some time afterwards.

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Secondly, yes, it was high contact, too. But to hold Archer completely responsible for that is nonsense. Why does Cleary have no onus in protecting himself in that situation? Why does all the responsibility fall on Archer’s shoulders? Because Cleary ended up more hurt?

And in what world was Archer acting in a careless manner? The kid was running after a loose ball and in a split second had to contend with an opponent dropping to the ground in order to collect the pill. An AI robot powered by a super computer wouldn’t be able to react that quickly to avoid hurting Cleary, let alone a creature of mere flesh and bone.

It’s a classic one plus one equals three situation from the MRO: someone got more hurt in a pure football collision, therefore the other person should pay the price.

This is nothing more than an arse-covering exercise by a paranoid AFL in an attempt to protect itself from future litigation by players afflicted by the long-term effects of concussion.

And as a result, the fabric of the game, little by little, continues to get eaten away. The sport is already vastly different to what it was 15 years ago. At this rate, in another 15 years, it might be unrecognisable completely.

Footy in its purest form is a 360-degree, high-velocity, ballistic, and therefore dangerous, contact sport. That’s what it is at its core. As a result, there simply has to still be room to allow for accidents to occur in such a chaotic environment. Players cannot be suspended just because they were the lucky ones to emerge from a collision in better shape than their opponent. It’s unfair, unjust and basically illogical.

Serious injuries are a fact of life in Aussie rules footy, and not just ones involving the brain. Everybody knows the risks involved. If players don’t like those risks, they don’t have to be AFL players. Nobody is forcing them into that profession. They’re perfectly welcome to choose another vocation and it would be totally understandable as well! Footy is not for the faint of heart.

But for the league to dramatically alter the nature of the sport in this way just because it is spooked by possible legal ramifications down the line is completely unwarranted and misguided.

As the custodian of the sport at the highest level that we all love so much, the AFL is doing everyone a disservice.

Clarkson, like many other footy followers, admitted he was unsure of what else Archer could’ve done to mitigate such a hotly-contested situation as that.

“I don’t really know the answer to that,” he said.

“There’s no malice in it whatsoever. One (Archer) is coming in hard to compete and the other guy (Cleary) is going in low.

“If you decide to go in low, it better not be that you take the legs of the opposition.

“If you stay upright, though, in terms of ‘Arch’ coming in, then you run the risk of someone low – hitting them in the head with your legs or whatever.

“So it’s a really, really difficult one.”

And it’s only being made more difficult by the impossible expectations the league is placing on its players.

For the sake of football’s soul, the Kangaroos must appeal Archer’s ban.