They play the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba on Thursday night, St Kilda in Adelaide, Essendon on Anzac Day and Adelaide in Adelaide meaning they only appear once in Melbourne in April.

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Because Gather Round creates an extra match in the season, teams still play the same number of games in their home state as they have in previous years when the season went for 22 rounds.

Collingwood and St Kilda are the second billing of Gather Round’s doubleheader, which kicks off with Geelong and West Coast at Adelaide Oval. The AFL deliberately scheduled the higher drawing match of each doubleheader second in the hope a crowd would build throughout the afternoon.

The AFL have sold over 170,000 tickets so far for the round with more than 60,000 people expected to arrive from interstate for the festival of football.

‘Complete rubbish’: Coach defends Coniglio over serial whinger claims

Vince Rugari

Greater Western Sydney coach Adam Kingsley has launched an impassioned defence of Stephen Coniglio, labelling as “complete rubbish” the suggestion that the star midfielder is a serial complainer to umpires.

Coniglio was pinged for dissent after questioning a free kick that wasn’t given to the Giants against Carlton on Saturday - a pivotal moment which handed the Blues not only a goal, but the momentum in the last quarter of the Giants’ 10-point defeat.

The heavy punishment for what was a very mild reaction from the 29-year-old has led to widespread confusion over the dissent rule, which was introduced by the AFL last year to combat umpire abuse - and was eventually enforced fairly, Kingsley said, once a mid-season readjustment was made to only clamp down on overly demonstrative actions and accept a certain level of emotion from players in the heat of battle.

Kingsley did, however, take issue with the implication made by the AFL to the club, by umpires boss Dan Richardson in his carefully worded statement on Monday, and in subsequent reports that the free kick against Coniglio was given because of an accumulation of complaints made by him to officials.

Kingsley suggested the AFL should have just admitted a mistake was made instead of positioning Coniglio as a repeat offender.

“The rhetoric has been around it was a reaction to numerous events. Well, I can tell you, that is just complete rubbish,” he said.

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“That’s not the case at all. So anyone who wants to attack the decision from that angle is completely wrong.

“When you look at ‘Cogs’, you’re dealing with one of the most respectful people in the AFL. I think he just moves on and gets on with what his next task is, and Essendon this week. He’s moved on. I’ve moved on. What’s happened, happened.”

Richardson’s statement did not make clear whether the AFL thought the decision against Coniglio was right or wrong and effectively conceded that dissent will be assessed inconsistently by umpires who take differing views, saying that the league “can’t coach human response” - even though the rule asks players to regulate their own human responses.

Speaking on AFL 360 on Tuesday night, Richmond star Jack Riewoldt said “no one has an idea” any longer as to what constitutes dissent, and what the threshold of acceptable dissent is. Kingsley’s former Port Adelaide teammate Kane Cornes showed on Nine’s Sunday Footy Show other similar or worse instances of dissent over the weekend that went unpunished, and said he was “embarrassed for the game”.

Asked if he now understood the rule and how it would be enforced, Kingsley took a long pause before saying: “Yes and no.

“The more we discuss it, and the more we have leniency around what is and what isn’t [dissent], I think it just clouds what the umpires’ decisions are, and it makes it incredibly more difficult for those guys umpire the game.

“We know it’s a hard game to umpire already. So why are we making it even more difficult? The rule is the rule, whether a mistake was made on the weekend or not - well, our view is that it was, let’s just admit it and move on.

“If you look back to last year, I think everyone identified that it was over-policed, and so we pulled it back a little bit, and I thought we made really strong adjustments in that phase ... [that’s] where it needs to be, and I felt like it was really well umpired in that space, in that timeframe.

“I think the rule itself is the right rule, absolutely. I think it’s had a positive impact on the game. So let’s just keep applying it the way we were.”

Lewis sidelined at least until round eight

Jon Pierik

Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell has revealed that key forward Mitch Lewis will be sidelined for longer than first thought.

Lewis, 24, had been listed as being out for another one or two weeks as he recovers from the anterior cruciate ligament sprain, but it emerged on Wednesday that Lewis also has an issue with his other knee.

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“His knee that he has had his ACL sprain on is coming along nicely and is in a good position, but his other knee is causing him a little bit of trouble, which he is probably around [round] seven or eight now, at best,” Mitchell said.

Lewis was initially hurt during match simulation at La Trobe University in January.

His absence, and the poor form of Jacob Koschitzke, has meant the Hawks have had to go with a patchwork forward line. Lewis booted 37 goals from 15 games last year, but missed the final three rounds last season due to a jarred knee, the same knee he injured in January.

Mitchell said he hopes small forward Chad Wingard (calf) returns this week.

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The Hawks head into their Easter Monday clash against reigning premiers Geelong buoyed by their upset win over North Melbourne in Launceston. The Cats are winless after three rounds, with skipper Patrick Dangerfield conceding their confidence had taken a hit.

However, four-time premiership player Mitchell, a key player in the recent fierce rivalry between the clubs, refused to buy into suggestions the Cats were wounded.

“I don’t know if I would say they are in a bit of a struggle. They have been here before. They have always been a side that has been able to respond. They are a quality outfit, and they are better than the way they are playing,” Mitchell said.

The Hawks won by 12 points when the clubs met in last year’s corresponding fixture. While the Hawks went on to finish 13th, with the Cats claiming a breakthrough flag, Mitchell said his team could still take confidence from that round-five result when Dylan Moore booted four goals.

“When they played in the grand final and were just so dominant for the majority of the year, knowing that we had beaten them was a source of confidence to say: ‘OK, they are the best team in the competition and have 16 games in a row or thereabouts, and we had beaten them through the year’,” Mitchell said.

“[But] that wasn’t in their best form, they had started last year a little bit slowly. We will have a look at something we did last year, but both teams have changed significantly in that time.”

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