Collingwood captain Scott Pendlebury said the players and coaches are clear on the crackdown on umpire dissent this season and don't have an issue with the shift, after the rule was put back in the spotlight following several contentious moments across round five.
"No offence, but I feel like the media is the last group to understand it. The players all have a handle on it; the coaches pretty clearly say we know what to expect; it's the media that seem to have a big issue with it and that goes into the public forum because it gets spoken about so much," Pendlebury said.
"As players, we are so clear that anything we do will be 50. We have pre-season games where we were playing a practice match and giving six or seven away and now we wouldn’t even have one a week. We are getting a lot better at it.
"The message the AFL is sending is the right one: we are so many umpires short at the grassroots level and we want a lot of these young kids to umpire games of football. At some point we've got realise its bigger than what happens out here, it is what happens at the lower levels as well. We want umpires umpiring this great game."
Pendlebury will play in his 15th Anzac Day encounter when Collingwood looks to end a three-game losing streak next Monday at the MCG.
