Before going into the 2014 season senior coach, Chris Scott, shares his thoughts on last year’s AFL review panel and suggests where changes could be made.

The two main issues that Scott has with the current review system are the way in which carry-over-points are used and the panel's lack of consistency when it comes to making a decision.

"We have a little bit of an issue with the weighting system. We think it’s, in most cases, too harsh,” Scott told News Limited.

Last year, according to Scott, players seemed to receive harsher penalties for less severe incidents and softer punishment for foul and reckless play, especially if the player had no or very little carry-over-points to send him packing.

This is where the weight system becomes a problem, as lighter and accidental incidents tend to receive worse punishment if the player has offended before, which is why trials often come across as unfair.

“It doesn’t leave the panel any room for potential mistakes that have been made in the past. No system’s going to be perfect but I think it’s really confusing when you see really significant incidents get a week and then insignificant issues find a player penalized for three or four weeks just because he’s got carry-over points,” Scott explained.

“I understand there needs to be some disincentive there for players who are repeat offenders - but I think the punishment outweighs the crime in some respects.”

Scott also believes the review system needs to become less ambiguous in the eye of the players, the coaches and the public. At the moment there are too many grey areas, making the appeal procedure merely impossible.

“The other thing that we would promote is that there’s the use of precedent a little bit more,” Scott said.

“For us, certainly, but also for the public, so at least the public can say we made this decision based on other decisions we’ve made in the past.

“At the moment they tend to do that a little bit but clubs have no right to use that as a defence – to the point where fighting something through the tribunal is something where the odds are so stacked against you it’s rarely a good idea,”

However, Scott is confident that this year the AFL will take a better approach when finalising their decisions.

“I think the noises that we are hearing from the AFL are that they will change that - take a little more of a commonsense approach,” Scott said.

“It’s a really dangerous position to put yourself in when you say ‘head-high’ is ‘head-high’.

“It’s like saying you can’t push in the marking contest - well of course you can because it happens all the time. We’re talking about degrees of force. It seems to me that the change there and Wayne Campbell coming in, who’s a highly respected operator, that the commonsense approach is one that we would encourage.”