PROTECTING players going for the ball will again be at the forefront this season, with AFL football operations boss Mark Evans ordering umpires to be more stringent in the upcoming NAB Challenge.

Evans said he would rather see extra free kicks be paid — incorrectly or otherwise — than have a player be injured when being lifted or rotated in a tackle.

He has directed umpires to have their whistle ready should a player be lifted or spun to the ground in a tackle and not hesitate in paying a free kick.

“We have defined that I want umpires to pick up anytime a player is lifted in a tackle and any time they’re forcefully rotated to the ground, then those sorts of things should result in a free kick,” Evans told SEN on Thursday morning.

“The whole aim being, I’d rather pay free kicks and maybe have one or two be wrong rather than having a tackle go wrong and have one player injured and one player at the tribunal.”

Clubs won’t be the only ones experimenting with their game plans in the NAB Challenge, which kicks off on February 18, with Evans ordering a tightening of the deliberate-out-of-bounds rule and also protected space around a player taking a kick.

“We think there’s far more boundary play, we would prefer that we keep the ball alive if we can,” he explained.

“We’re increasing the size of the protected area and in the NAB Challenge, in the first two matches for each club, we’ll have that a 10m protected area rather than five.

“If that ends up being too large, we have the capacity to scale that back down to eight metres for the season, but we’ll take feedback from coaches and players on that first.”