AFL players could be cited by the match review panel within 24 hours of their matches this season – rather than wait days for the judiciary to sit in a lone session on Mondays.

This is particularly significant for players who are reported or involved in contentious on-field

incidents in Thursday matches and Friday Night Football. They are inevitably subjected to severe

public and media scrutiny across a weekend before the MRP meets.

The 18 AFL clubs’ football chiefs were advised of the league’s readiness to streamline the MRP

process during Friday’s meetings at AFL House.

The three-man match review panel – that this season gains former Crows half-forward Chris Knight as part of its four-man rotation team of former players who assess game-day reports and incidents flagged by AFL observers – has traditionally met on Mondays, at the end of the nine-game round.

Not only does this leave too much time for heavy public debate on incidents in Thursday and Friday night games, but also creates potential timeline problems for players who may wish to challenge the MRP with a tribunal hearing or appeal case if their clubs are drawn to play in the increasingly popular Thursday night timeslot.

Quick reviews within a day of a match would end this logjam – and some of the damaging public debates that follow contentious on-field incidents, particularly in the highly exposed Friday Night Football matches that carry national free-to-air television coverage.

The fall-out of the 2012 Essendon supplements saga – that has 34 players this year serving a season-long WADA-imposed ban – continues to create debate in the club meetings rooms at AFL House.

The club football operations chiefs again prodded the AFL on the salary cap relief expected at Port Adelaide, St Kilda, Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs – the four clubs caught short by having their Essendon recruits sidelined.

In the Power’s case, this involves ruckman-forward Patrick Ryder and specialist forward Angus Monfries.

Port Adelaide has not paid either player since January 31 and expects this gap in the club’s salary cap – of about $500,000 this year – to open up a “bonus” for next season.

Money not spent in one season of the salary cap, currently $11.5 million, can be carried forward to the next year.

Clubs that were polled by the AFL on whether the Power – and the other three affected clubs –

should have been allowed “top-up” players for Ryder and Monfries are now regretful of blocking

that move. Any replacement players would have chewed up Port Adelaide’s salary cap bonus for

next season.

Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley, still miffed at missing out on top-up players, insists the AFL must honour the salary cap bonus for this club.

“If you don’t pay someone, it doesn’t go into the cap ... right?” Hinkley said at The Advertiser-

Sunday Mail AFL season launch at Adelaide Oval last week.

The Power stopped paying Ryder and Monfries after they were banned from the appeal hearing of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in mid-January.

The expectation is Essendon will cover the lost wages to the Port Adelaide pair and the other Bombers banned by WADA.

michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au