^ I beg to differ. Firstly any player can register at any time as long as they are able to qualify for finals.
Qualification for finals is playing in 40% of the games. Simply, if there are 20 games in the season, then you have to actually play in 8 games. If there are 21 games in a season, clearly you can't play in 8.4 games, so the rules state any faction is rounded up to the next highest number, in this case the qualification for a 21 game season would be actually playing in 9.
I'm not a fan of the way the Tigers go about some things, but they are within their rights to register a player provided they are able to qualify whether that be before the first game or right on the death knock. If that player plays, but does not end up meeting the finals qualification, then they can't play finals.
I believe there is a medical exception that can be used but not sure of the details.
To me in this instance there is no 'getting around the rules', the rules are clear IMO.