That's bad luck!

As the calls for the addition of substitute players to the interchange bench become more and more frequent, it's worth reflecting on the scenarios that provoke such calls and some of the underlying principles of australian rules football.

It's now almost de rigeur for losing coaches to bemoan the lack of interchange players due to injury. The game has changed, but for many years reserves, known as 19th and 20th men, were available only as substitute players. Once a player was replaced by the 19th or 20th man, that was it for the day. If a coach was forced to use both reserves and a further injury occurred, that was bad luck.

Then we moved to an interchange system — which has had its own unfortunate implications with the speed of the game — and a new tactical battle emerged in the creative ways coaches used their interchange bench.

Let me stray slightly for a moment to mention the shape of the ball used in aussie rules. It's elliptical or oval and, except in highly-controlled circumstances, its behaviour is something of a lottery. Players are often left grasping at thin air as our ball makes an unexpected detour. When this happens, it's bad luck.

Back to the matter in hand. When a player is seriously injured, such as David Hille two minutes into the Anzac Day game, it's bad luck. If it rains and your team doesn't play well in wet weather, it's bad luck (unless you're at Docklands!). If the umpire bounces the ball and it doesn't go perfectly straight, thus favouring one team, it's — that's right, it used to be bad luck.

If your team has four serious injuries in the first half, that's real bad luck, because you've just lost any chance at rotations.

Let's wait and catch breath before rushing to add more players to the bench. When, years ago, the rules of centre bounce contests were changed to force ruckmen to run at each other to remove unsightly wrestling, no-one envisaged a spate of knee injuries — but that's exactly what we got. Then an outer circle was added to reduce the momentum on impact between ruckmen, and then we discovered they were disadvantaged when the bounce was less than straight. Then the ruckmen were told thay couldn't cross the centre line before leaping for the ball. . .

Gradually, each little change has had unfortunate implications and now we're seriously at risk of losing the umpires' bounce that, as with much else in aussie rules, has an element of luck attached to it. Not only that, but ruck contests have become a magical world where some rules of the game don't exist and free kicks seem to be plucked out almost at whim by the umpires.

Let's remember that luck is one of the imponderables that makes aussie rules a better game than boring, nil-all soccer, a better game than big-boys' British bulldog NRL, a better game than mobile wresting RU and a better than than the unltra-managed and controlled NFL.

Substitutes for injured players over and above the four-man interchange bench? No mate, that's bad luck!