direct opponent. Impeding a player while he is advancing the ball as part of measuring out a previous 50-metre penalty. More generally, if any free kick is paid against the defensive team while a mark or free kick is being taken, the umpire will either pay the free kick to the violated player at the spot of the foul, or award a 50-metre penalty to the player with the ball, depending upon which penalty brings the attacking team closer to goal. There are also two types of in-play infringement for which a 50-metre penalty is automatically applied on top of the initial free kick. These are: A free kick for illegally holding or impeding a player's ability to participate in the "next act of play", for example by preventing a player from receiving a handball while running into open space. Any free kick resulting from an interchange infringement or head count. Otherwise, a 50-metre penalty can only be applied to an infringement which is separate to the initial mark or free kick. History The fifteen-yard penalty was first introduced at senior level by the Victorian Football Association in 1939, as one of the rules included in its rival code of Australian rules football. The rule was introduced to give the umpire a means of penalising a player who cribbed over the mark or wasted time on the mark; under standard rules at the time, such infractions could only be policed by reports. The Australian National Football Council introduced the rule into the national rules during 1954 (leagues began using it in 1955), which was applied to both time-wasting and to crude, late challenges on the player with the mark. The length was increased to 50 metres in 1988 when it was determined that the fifteen metre penalty had become insufficient to deter time-wasting and scragging. For the 2022 AFL season, as part of the AFL's crackdown on umpire abuse, umpires have been empowered to penalise players who talk back to them or remonstrate physically, for example by raising their arms. Due to the increased frequency of the 50m penalty for relatively minor infractions, questions over just how punitive the rule is have led to discussions over whether a 25m penalty should be introduced. Former AFL coaches Kevin Sheedy and Leigh Matthews backed the implementation of a new 25m penalty, based on how frequently the penalty is now applied for minor