HERE'S an approximation of the scale of moral turpitude in AFL football, inferred from recent incidents.

At the bottom, there is the player who, on Saturday, bloodied the face of his opponent about a suburb away from the play, leaving his victim in such a state that he is unlikely to play this weekend.

No one saw it. Michael Voss said he saw it on live television, but later — complete footballer that he is — remembered that he hadn't seen it. Nor is there any footage, which, in the modern idiom, is proof positive that it didn't happen. Jeff Farmer looks to have become the football equivalent of the tree that fell in the forest.

Slightly further up the scale, there is Chris Judd, who was arraigned for poking his opponent in the eye. Again, almost no one saw it, not the umpire on the spot (who, nonetheless, put in a notice-of-incident, suggesting that he had seen something), not the offended player, Campbell Brown (obscured vision, presumably). He went out of his way to say so.

There was footage and on that footage, there was a player saying shrilly that he had seen an eye gouge. But Judd was exonerated. Evidently, even the existence of footage did not prove that anything had happened.

Then, in a twist, Brown admitted that he had lied. Now we were moving into really murky moral territory. There was an investigation and a flood of outrage directed at Brown, some of it because he lied, some because he told the truth about lying. At length, he was fined $15,000.

So, for a smashed-up face, nothing yet. For a superstar's eye gouge, nothing. For a lie, which would not have been uncovered except by the player's own confession, a thumping fine.

But the gravest offence went almost unseen. Hawthorn took its own film of the St Kilda/Western Bulldogs match a fortnight ago and, for its effrontery, was fined $50,000.

This was on the basis that should a scrap of the illicit camera work seep onto the internet, it would be unfair to the league's telecasters, who pay so handsomely for their exclusive rights. It's about priorities: potentially violated broadcast rights first, broken noses and scratched eyes second.

On this, the AFL is vigilant. Announcing the fine, football operations manager Adrian Anderson said: "The club has made a full apology for its actions and acknowledged its wrongdoing. The club handed over all videotape from the night and has fully co-operated at all times with the investigation."

Anderson added that Hawthorn had gotten off lightly!

Now, there is a twist. The AFL, in its munificence, allows clubs a fixed, non-broadcast camera at one end of the ground, one match at a time, by request. Few clubs bother.

Then Farmer goes down, but a desperate search for extra footage turns up nothing because no one dares to have so much as a box brownie trained on the match, or at least to admit to it. There were no fixed cameras.

It is anomalous that matches are not covered equally. Some are played under free-to-air television's all-seeing eyes and a fixed camera besides, some fall under pay TV's lesser watch. But it is unimportant: "unlucky to get caught" is not an excuse, "lucky to get away with it" not a validation.

It is more anomalous that football has come to depend so wholly on television footage for evidence, outweighing all other. Farmer was not heard to fall, not seen to fall, so, as far as the AFL is concerned, is still standing bolt upright in the middle of Telstra Dome.

At least the really big injustices are in hand. Though the above decisions were made by different agencies — some by investigators, some by the tribunal, some by the executive — the ethics are consistent: don't do it. If you do it, don't get caught. If you get caught, don't lie. If you lie, don't admit it. If you admit anything, don't dob. But, even if you do it, get caught, lie, dob and confess, don't even think about perpetrating anything that might in even the most oblique way threaten to compromise the AFL's commercial arrangements. Otherwise, you will really be in trouble.