The decision comes after two incidents in the past month, where players were tackled after their 30-second allocation was exhausted.

The second and most recent incident involved North Melbourne's Shaun Higgins who said he hadn't heard the umpire who was more than 30 metres away, late in the third quarter against the Western Bulldogs.

The incident led to criticism led by AFL great Leigh Matthews who labelled the situation as "deplorable" and "stupid".

The countdown clock had previously been removed for the final two minutes of each term.

AFL General Manager Football Operations Simon Lethlean said the issue had been raised with club coaches at their informal meeting earlier this week in light of the Higgins incident.

The AFL had moved to alter its position on the basis of:

• making the umpiring of this element of the game as clear and consistent as is possible for the umpires

• making this element of the game as clear and consistent as possible for players to understand during a match

• making the time being permitted for players to shoot for goal as consistent as possible

Lethlean said the umpires would have the power to call play on if a player was clearly seeking to delay the resumption of play.

• Where a player is clearly and deliberately delaying the commencement of a normal goal kicking routine, the umpire will blow his whistle to instruct the player to move the ball on (as per around the ground marks and free kicks), and if the player does not do so immediately, then play on will be called.