RICHARD Pratt has stood aside as Carlton president only days before the release of a new AFL rule could have significantly embarrassed him and his club.

The league's personal responsibility policy is close to complete and its historic implementation will have ramifications for all servants of the AFL, be they players, presidents or boot studders.

It provides a glaring indication of just how dramatically football's social landscape has changed since John Elliott refused to even temporarily relinquish the Carlton presidency back in the early 1990s.

The National Crime Authority began investigating Elliott for corporate fraud in 1990. Like a dinosaur freed from extinction, the disgraced Blues boss, who finally beat those charges in 1996, thrust his thoughts onto Melbourne's airwaves yesterday in an attempt to defend Pratt, who surely would not have thanked him for it.

Elliott, who was warned not to comment on Carlton matters by the club earlier this week after telling The Age he had advised Pratt to

re-sign Brendan Fevola on a three-year deal, made one accurate statement yesterday — that Pratt was innocent until proven guilty.

The man who was declared bankrupt and almost sent Carlton down the same path following years of salary-cap cheating and bad business practices declared that Pratt should remain at the helm of the Blues just as he — Elliott — did and, in turn, achieved great things for the club.

But Pratt had to step down and he knew it. When Elliott refused to do the right thing by his football club, one of his directors, Mike Fitzpatrick, resigned in protest. Fitzpatrick now chairs the AFL.

Pratt's regime has achieved a remarkable turnaround for Carlton but his continuing tenure would have been a disturbing distraction.

The new rule would have meant Pratt would have been unable to survive his job as Carlton president anyway were he found guilty and convicted of the criminal charges that were lodged on Thursday by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. They appear to have shocked Pratt, his football club and the AFL.

The new rule covers club officials and directors, largely at the behest of the AFL players, who initially fought the policy when it was prematurely launched in November 2006. Originally devised as an attempt to take a stand against the game's often poor treatment of women, it proved too invasive and is now aimed at covering situations ranging from Ben Cousins to Pratt. Just how it differentiates between players and honorary officials will be intriguing.

Pratt has stepped aside only 16 months after taking on the Carlton presidency and probably about six months before he planned to originally stand down, having agreed to do the job for two seasons. Pratt altered those plans late last year largely because the Blues boss had started to enjoy himself and indicated he would stick around for 2009. His recycled legal battle could end all that should the case remain unresolved in 2008.

It has been a murky few months where Pratt, the AFL and the ACCC have been concerned. After being found guilty of price-fixing and fined $36 million in the Federal Court late last year, some public pressure was placed on Pratt to resign as president of Carlton but only media commentators were prepared to say so blatantly.

The Blues members were hardly going to turn on the man who signed Chris Judd, nor did one sponsor threaten to leave the club, and Pratt himself aimed a whack at Collingwood president Eddie McGuire in the March edition of The Age Melbourne Magazine in the belief McGuire was bad-mouthing him.

McGuire, who is a friend of ACCC chairman and former AFL commissioner Graham Samuel, denied this and reportedly met and patched things up with Pratt. The AFL denied reports of having misgivings or asking questions over Pratt's presidency, although it confirmed individuals close to the AFL had done so.

The obvious conclusion was that Samuel was incensed at Pratt's tenure and the negative image he was creating for the game but Samuel recently called The Age and denied waging a subversive campaign against Pratt.

Now his ACCC has laid criminal charges against Pratt at a time when the billionaire businessman believed he had done a deal with the consumer watchdog and his battle was finished.

His business practices aside, should Pratt never return to Carlton, he has certainly achieved something of a resurrection at the club. Something that cannot be said of Elliott, flags or not.