With the pre-season competition only forty-four days away — yes, that’s right, 44 days till the Bombers shape up against the Weagles on Feb 12 — the aussierulesblog editorial staff felt it was important to take the opportunity to research a video decision-assistance system. So, we rounded up our sibling and headed off to day three of the Boxing Day test. We were rewarded with three video referrals.

Cricket is a fascinating game and we much prefer the multi-day version to the one day or, heaven forfend, multi-hour versions. There is a subtlety and majesty about first-class cricket that we think no other team game captures. Of course, there are good days and not-so-good days.

Last year, we sat through Dale Steyn and JP Duminy humiliating what was allegedly the Australian attack. This year, we saw nine wickets fall, two excellent 50s scored by Pakistani batsmen and the emergence of a young Pakistani fast bowler with a real future at Test level. Nevertheless, it felt like quite a slow day.

On three occasions however, our attention was galvanised by a team referring the umpire’s decision to the so-called fourth umpire.

Now, as explained earlier, we were feeling that the day was plodding along at a relatively unexciting pace — probably not helped by getting to bed at 2:30AM after watching a replay of the 2009 Grand Final on Foxtel.

When a team asks for a referral, cricket’s natural rhythm is upset. For the TV and radio audiences, there’s banter to listen to or replays to cast an eye over. For the poor old paying customer sitting in the grandstand, there’s nothing but the seemingly interminable wait ‘til the fourth umpire’s decision is relayed to the field umpire.

This is not a value-add for Test cricket.

The further point to make with regard to these three referrals was the the umpire’s decision was supported in each case. The common case for a referral system is that we should be using all available resources to make sure we get the right decision every time. Great! And there are how many wrong decisions made? Not many, clearly.

It seems to aussierulesblog that this system is a variation on a mulligan in golf. Why not let’s extend it to the players so that they make the right decision every time? A bowler doesn’t like the ball that gets clobbered for a towering six, so let him have another try after annulling the score from the offending ball. A batsman realises after driving at the ball outside off stump that it was swinging away and he should have allowed it to pass. Annul the catch taken at gully and replay the ball!!!

Of course this is nonsense!

As we have previously noted, there are substantial inequities built into the loosely proposed ‘system’ for video checking of goal umpiring decisions during the 2010 pre-season competition. The ‘dead time’ during the cricket referral shows what a disaster such dead time would be in an AFL contest and the resulting inequities inherent in avoiding dead time make the proposal a nonsense — all for a mere three wrong decisions throughout the whole of the 2009 season according to Adrian Anderson.

The idiots, it seems, are running the asylum.

Update: Watching a referral on Channel Nein’s cricket coverage is just as interminable, with endless speculation over microscopic details. Do we really need a system like this in Aussie rules? On every level, we think the answer is a resounding “No!!”

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the culture of the playing group at Carlton remains heavily influenced by the Fevola years. The former Blues spearhead demonstrated his inability to consume alcohol responsibly on one of footy’s biggest stages, but that was merely the latest in a series of alcohol-related incidents over his career. As the Blues’ best player over a good part of that time, it seems his indiscretions were treated in a manner designed to minimise fallout for both player and club.

News today that 19-year-old Carlton rookie, Levi Casboult, was coerced into joining a drinking game on a so-called ‘booze cruise’, pitting himself against a senior Carlton player, aren’t a good look for the club. There will be many 19-year-olds in the community who would have given the senior player a run for his money, but that’s not the point.

Let’s get past the notion of responsible consumption of alcohol. The fact is that these men are paid as elite athletes; their clubs and their clubs’ fans expect them to perform at their elite best.

For an elite athlete, alcohol consumption to the point of being detained by police, or alcohol consumption sufficient to break down inhibitions and resulting in actions that attract the attention of the police should be an absolute no-no.

Players aren’t recruited for their raw brainpower. It’s physical capabilities and associated ‘footy smarts’ that recruiters look for. As a work colleague noted to aussierulesblog today at a Xmas luncheon, clubs must look at a player with a brain as an unexpected bonus.

Aussierulesblog has defended players in the past, arguing that some can’t handle the mantle of role model that the community is so keen to crown them with. Notwithstanding that Carlton is not our favourite club, there’s something about these latest incidents that yells a message that these men don’t consider themselves as elite athletes. That’s not good enough.

Let’s also recall that players have their ‘mad Mondays’ where much is forgiven. It’s an opportunity to let their hair down and the community — certainly the footy community — are likely to allow them a little more leeway in that context.

We have to ask what these players thought was going on. This is not the end of the year for them — that’s mad Monday! We’re six or seven weeks from the first (semi-)serious hitout of the season and the Carlton boys are playing drinking games on a booze cruise! Discipline? Leadership? Fevola?

Most readers will, we are sure, recognise the metaphor of a fish rotting from the head — that is, poor or missing leadership is eventually reflected in the rest of the entity. Carlton’s tacit acceptance of on-field scoring opportunities over leadership and team orientation continues to reap its just desserts.

As another year winds to a close, aussierulesblog would like to take the opportunity to pass on our best wishes for the festive season to our vast audience.

To our readers, regular and not-so-regular, thank you for providing the occasional hits that keep us believing that someone out there is occasionally interested in what we think and write.

Thank you to those who’ve posted comments. Your efforts have been very much appreciated.

Finally, still some days short of the New Year, we pledge a New Year’s resolution: We will strive in 2010 to avoid blaming all of footy’s ills on the Great Satan (Jeff Gieschen).

Have a great festive season and a terrific New Year! Roll on footy season!!

Forgive me! The post title is deliberately inflammatory and slightly misleading. This post is about personal preferences.

The “world game” simply leaves me gasping — for some Aussie rules!

Is it the lack of scoring or the pathetic staging and diving? Yes, they’re part of it, although I get the impression there are fewer boring 0–0 draws in the modern game. The goal that was scored from behind the centre line in the EPL this week was staggering. The top-level players are undoubtedly enormously skilful, as you’d expect, and the extent of their ball control is sometimes breathtaking. Thierry Henry showed recently just how good they could be if they could use their hands as well!!! And yet, the spectacle eludes me. If you find it enjoyable and exciting, terrific!

Aussie rules though, gets my heart pumping. Genuine physical contests with no quarter begged or given. Ball control skills with an irregular ball that, without a shadow of a doubt, rival the skills of the other code. The full involvement of the players in Aussie rules — kicking, marking, handballing, running, tackling, shepherding — seems more satisfying to me.

Were the FFA to pull off the completely fanciful and win the rights to host the FIFA World Cup, they certainly won’t have to save a seat for me. No doubt Frank Lowy and Sepp Blatter  will be tossing in their sleep wondering how they’ll survive without aussierulesblog in the stands, but I suspect they’d get by.

And there’s the nub of my attitude to the World Cup bid. Fine, go ahead if you must, but I don’t really care. Don’t spend too much taxpayers’ money along the way and don’t disturb the games that are most important to the majority of us.

We haven’t even reached Christmas and already there is devastating news for some players.

News that David Rodan has done an ACL in an innocuous handball drill is very sad. Rodan is one of aussierulesblog’s favourite players and we wish him a successful recovery and return to AFL in 2011.

The news does prompt us to wonder whether modern players’ bodies are too highly stressed. It’s understandable when we see a knee pushed and pulled in unnatural directions and an ACL diagnosis results. All too often recently, it seems, ACL injuries are the result of apparently-innocuous, single-player events.

As a Bombers fan, the one that comes most clearly to mind is David Hille’s injury in the early stages of the 2009 Anzac Day clash. Hille, twenty metres clear of any opponent and not under pressure in any way, takes a medium-sized leap to mark a pass from a teammate and, upon landing, immediately clutches his knee.

Matthew Richardson’s ACL injury in 1996 (I think), was similarly innocuous.

In the quest for ever-greater levels of fitness and agility, perhaps we are driving these human bodies to breaking point?

One would hope that the running joke that the referral system in the second cricket Test has become would be cause for Adrian Anderson to rethink his proposal for a third goal umpire to check contentious scoring adjudications during the 2010 pre-season AFL competition.

Cricket, with its natural space for reviewing decisions, has got a technical system that delivers at least as much uncertainty as the blokes in white shirts standing at either end of the pitch.

Trying to insert an obviously similarly flawed system into the hurly burley of an AFL contest, without the flawed assistance of a snickometer or a hotspot camera, is a recipe for disappointment. Give it away now, Adrian.

While Andrew Demetriou may have gilded the lily talking up the possibility of a cancelled AFL season should Australia win the right to host the FIFA World Cup, it’s clear that a country where “football” runs a poor fourth, at least in commercial terms, amongst winter sporting codes simply should not be in the race in the first place.

I suppose it’s laudable that Frank Lowy and friends are generating recognition internationally for Australia. There may even be a little coin to be added to the GDP by a few international visitors, were we to host.

Lowy and his fellow promoters of the bid must have known at the time they launched the bid that there would be a clash of calendars and venues. The time to work out what could and could not be done scheduling-wise was before the bid was submitted.

Instead we have this unseemly battle of the codes via the media in response to FFA’s ambush. Tell FFA and FIFA to stick their tournament where it fits — somewhere where “football” is a religion.

A report today that a third goal umpire with access to television coverage and a comms link to on-field umpires will scrutinise goal umpiring decisions through the 2010 pre-season competition raises many questions.

As is the AFL’s modus operandi, this proposal is using a sledgehammer to crack a wheat grain. Footy operations boss Adrian Anderson says only three goal umpiring decisions across 2009 were later assessed as incorrect. Three of how many? Had one of those incorrect decisions not occurred during a close Grand Final, you can be assured we wouldn’t be having this experiment in 2010.

The biggest, but by no means the only, problem with this proposal relates to timing. Anderson says the third umpire will be able to assess TV coverage of replays, but if the ball has been bounced, or play has otherwise restarted, there would be no redress.

Let’s think for second Adrian. One team is awarded a goal in error, so the third umpire has all of the time until the ball is returned to the central field umpire and it is bounced to assess whether or not the decision was correct. The other team scores a goal that is adjudged a behind by the goal umpire, but the full-back grabs a ball from the bucket and has kicked out again — restarting play — within a few seconds. For the second team there’s no chance of the decision being overturned because play has restarted.

Next we need to ask whether the third umpire will have the capacity to ‘order up’ specific footage or angles to help in making a judgement, or will they be subject to the director’s whims? You don’t need to be a ‘rocket surgeon’ to see there’s room for some spurious activity here.

Look, Anderson has condemned his proposal out of his own mouth. Three incorrect decisions in a season! For crying out loud!!