YET again, the issue of deliberately rushed behinds has emerged. In a grand final, no less. And this time, no one can argue a case of sour grapes from a loser. Not when the coach of the winning team was himself calling for change.

"I don't think it's a good advertisement for our game that that sort of tactic is used on a regular basis," Alastair Clarkson told Channel Nine's Footy Show yesterday. "I'd be surprised if it wasn't addressed at some point over summer.

"I don't like the idea of (awarding) three points, I think that changes the mix and traditions of our game. But I think something needs to be addressed in that regard."

Hear, hear. Some of us were accused of hysterical overreaction when Richmond's Joel Bowden walked the ball back through his own goal from a kick-in to save the game against Essendon earlier this season. "Once in a blue moon," they said.

Well, it's been a pretty constant blue moon ever since. The very next week, a TAC under-18 team was "doing a Bowden". A couple of weeks after that, Collingwood shored up a lead late against St Kilda by doing likewise.

Now the practice of walking backwards through the goals from a kick-in is commonplace. Players routinely handball, even kick through their own goals from 25-30 metres away. Hawthorn's Mark Williams did just that to post the last of Geelong's staggering 11 rushed behinds in the grand final.

Fair enough, too, given what was at stake. Hawthorn soaked up the first 15 minutes of the final term brilliantly on Saturday to put the result beyond doubt, and those rushed behinds certainly played their part.

Smart football, sure, even if Clarkson and the Hawthorn players said it wasn't a planned tactic, more an instinctive reaction to facing a wall of blue-and-white while trying to get out of defence.

But it's an escape route far too easy, and one which allows the team "playing chicken" far too much of an advantage, not only in time it chews up, but by giving it a chance to slip into a rehearsed set play with no pressure.

It's too good an option for a defender under pressure to ignore. Which is why it's happening so frequently, average rushed behinds per game climbing from 3.9 five years ago to more than six now.

Some like the three-point penalty as a preventative measure. But we'd be happy with a bounce either at the top of the goal square or 20 to 25 metres from goal.

That's not a rule change that requires enormous research or even thought. The mounting evidence confronts us in virtually every game now, in just a couple of months "the Bowden" having become far more the norm than a curiosity.

Arguably the best change made to the rules of the game remains the out-of-bounds on the full penalty introduced 40 years ago, which stopped defenders kicking for touch like in rugby. This trend is every bit as unattractive and against the spirit of the game and needs the same attention, urgently.

We can't now even warn "wait till it happens in a grand final". It just did.