COLLINGWOOD didn't have any injuries to speak of after Friday night's important win over St Kilda. Well, not to its players anyway. One official who had to play interchange supervisor might have required some post-traumatic counseling.

To say the new interchange-bench set-ups and rules didn't exactly go smoothly in their first outings would be an understatement.

I sat a couple of metres away from the Collingwood bench for 3AW on Friday night, and the poor Magpie man, Billy Carp, was being driven mad attempting to physically restrain sometimes up to three players at once from entering the arena before the players they were replacing had left the field.

At least twice, once for close to one minute, the Pies were left one short as the necessary paperwork was handed to the AFL interchange steward. There were several transgressions, which from next week will cost free kicks and 50-metre penalties.

It was the case also at the MCG on Saturday, and again at Telstra Dome on Saturday night, where Brisbane Lions coach Leigh Matthews, as usual, cut through the red tape and straight to the chase. Why, indeed, does an orange-coated steward need to be handed a post-it note to signify an interchange?

It's a quaint system indeed, and quite comical when you see the amount of high-tech computer software the clubs carry on to their benches these days, operating just a few paces away.

The intent of the interchange-rules revamp has been honourable enough, but there now appears even more people, space and communication involved in what should be the relatively simple business of substituting one player for another. Come next week, when the amnesty is over and the free kicks and 50s kick in, there might be a lot more angst involved, too.