YOU KNEW about a second after Barry Hall's left fist connected with Brent Staker's jaw at ANZ Stadium on Saturday night what the big talking point out of the weekend's football was going to be. And you knew about a second after that the size of the moral high horse people were going to be jumping on.

And so it began yesterday morning. Here's a quick overview. Hall should be variously: banned for life, charged with assault, made to serve his inevitable suspension only after he had recovered from his wrist injury, maybe even hung, drawn and quartered.

By the time Sydney coach Paul Roos and Hall fronted a news conference late yesterday afternoon to publicly apologise to Staker and football in general, all that was missing was the lynch mob and portable gallows to satisfy the bloodlust coming from people with a supposed distaste for blood.

Before they start again, let's make it clear. This isn't an apology for Hall. The incident was a shocker, the sight of Staker's eyes rolling around in his head the moment the blow connected sickening. But you wonder just how many weeks on the sidelines would be enough to satisfy the sort of hysteria that erupted within moments of Staker hitting the deck.

I get a little tired of the extent of the hand-wringing that these days inevitably follows anything untoward on the field, not to mention off it. And the hypocrisy.

I'd love to know just how many of those so revolted by what they saw on Saturday soaked up every one of the countless slow-motion relays of the incident, shaking their heads in disgust but secretly yearning for yet another glimpse of fist upon flesh. Then went trawling for a bit more on You Tube, which had the Hall punch posted within minutes.

What is it about human nature that compels people to such bouts of voyeurism, followed by torrents of sermonising about the potential damage done by the viewing of such horrors? Guilt?

Brace yourselves, too, for the barrage of "what about the children?" correspondence, as if next Saturday's Auskick clinics are going to be turned suddenly into de facto boxing rings.

I'd love to know just how many of those parents who will no doubt be penning letters of outrage to The Age preaching about violence and vowing never to let their sons play Australian football would ever really have been party to them doing so anyway.

If they really had, they would know that incidents like that between Hall and Staker are about as common in football now as the drop kick and lace-up guernseys.

That their kids are in far more danger walking around the Melbourne CBD on a Saturday night than playing a sport in which, thankfully, skill, pace and endurance count for plenty, fighting ability zero.

And that the fact we have had to turn our memories back a decade or two to recall similar incidents of note is the proof.

Then there's the sort of thinking that has Hall carefully planning and plotting the demise of his next victim, a serial thug wreaking havoc across the football fields of the land.

News flash (1): it's been six years since Hall was suspended. That's 100-plus games in which his supposedly evil nature has been kept at bay. Yes, he was lucky indeed to escape the rap that might have cost him a premiership medallion and, indeed, his whole team a flag in 2005. But last time I checked, there wasn't a "get his right whack now" clause in the tribunal code.

News flash (2): AFL football is a game of unrelenting pressure and speed in which players will make mistakes and, shock, horror, occasionally let emotion and frustration get the better of them. Anyone who has played competitive contact sport at any level should understand that. And anyone who claims never to have had a rush of blood similar to that of Hall is either kidding themselves, or they're the Dalai Lama.

But back in the real world, the issue now is how the match review panel system survives this. Under the MRP guidelines, even a ruling of an intentional strike, high impact and high contact on Hall's strike, given his lack of a conviction in the past five seasons, means four games, and with the guilty plea he has already offered, just three.

That clearly isn't going to satisfy the masses. But to refer an incident directly to the tribunal, the MRP has to conclude it was severe. As dramatic as the Hall-Staker footage appears, the West Coast player hasn't had his jaw broken, and may even play next weekend. If this goes straight to the tribunal, so, logically, will every incident in which the player offended against suffers some serious physical damage.

An MRP-imposed sanction will bring inevitable "soft on crime"-type cries. But a tribunal hearing and the inevitable media circus won't exactly be music to an image-conscious AFL's ears either. Ears that are already surely burning from a tide of hysteria, and the bleatings of self-appointed moral police who, as usual in these matters, shoot first, ask questions later.