Saturday, December 25, 2010

2010 as we saw it

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January
Who can forget the fallout from the Blues’ players pre-Christmes ‘booze cruise’? Club culture was our constant companion through a very quiet month.

Reports of AFLPA draftee induction camps gave us hope that, eventually, we shouldn’t have to endure the infantile antics of AFL footballers.

Later in the year, 18-year NFL veteran, Brett Favre, demonstrated this is a forelorn hope with his ‘sexting’.

February
As we prepared to get into the semi-serious stuff of the pre-season competition, the AFL gave bloggers a late Christmas present by revealing its so-called staging sanctions. Confusion reigned with almost everybody expecting players staging for a free kick in a marking contest to be free kicked or reported. Hardly anyone took the trouble to watch the video and understand what the AFL actually intended.

Temporary Saints recruit, Andrew Lovett, who already hadn’t managed to hit it off with his new teammates, found himself facing a rape charge and his new club finding him guilty without the benefit of a trial.

As the pre-season comp got underway, there was plenty of controversy with an apparent video referral of a scoring decision resulting in the goal umpire’s call being overturned. Field umpires had got straight back into stride by paying free kicks based on what they thought had happened rather than what they’d seen and, following the lead of Stephen McBurney, keeping their whistles on a hair trigger.

March
As the FFA seduced some sections of the AFL world with deals to upgrade regional stadiums, the Saints descended into amateur hour with the most inept handling of a grievance against a player in AFL history.

The AFL umpiring department announced their somewhat hilarious sponsorship by spectacle retailers, OPSM, and then proceeded to umpire sensibly — to everyone’s surprise!

Finally, the season proper got underway and we had a bit of a rant about how media select BOGs.

April
The AFL’s long-standing desire to make the game more attractive was thrown into chaos by the proliferation of ugly milling packs where everyone was frightened to take possession of the ball.

We lauded Western Bullgog, Bob Murphy, and his old-fashioned notion of respect for opponents and the Magpies–Saints clash provided a gilt-edged example of disrespect. Not only that, but three other posts focussed on this game. In the meantime, Brendan Fevola managed to tick off another couple of deadly sins on his personal bucket list.

We penned another instalment in our campaign to remove The Giesch, this time for inflexible interpretations.

Melbourne Storm managed to outmuscle every other sport in the world for press column-centimetres for a few days.

May
The month began with us berating Jeff Gieschen. That was a surprise — not.

Some genius at the AFL decided the Demons and the umpires would look spectacular in (nearly) matching uniforms for the Breast cancer game. Demons players couldn’t find their teammates on the field and kept handballing to umpires.

Speculation bubbled along concerning the next big NRL convert to AFL (and will Greg Inglis now make it another?), Jeff Kennett inserted his foot firmly in his mouth over the Ben Cousins doco, followed in close order by senior coach Alastair Clarkson shooting his gob off.

The rushed behind rule became interesting with about sixty thousand definitions being flung around, none of them being one of several employed by the AFL umpires. We finished the month by writing off St Kilda, in the wake of Riewoldt’s hamstring and lamenting the demise of respect and sportsmanship on the AFL field.

June
The holding the ball rule, 50-metre penalties, the advantage rule interpretation, and Jeff Gieschen, occupied much of our attention in June, along with Stephen Baker’s mauling of Steve Johnson and chief umpiring zealot, Steve McBurney’s hair-trigger whistle.

July
Co-operative goal umpiring that still couldn’t get the decision right was in our sights as July began. But we managed to focus on non-umpiring topics as well!

Modern players’ penchant for dribbling the ball through for a goal caught our attention and indicated to us that these players are just show ponies.

Confusing and inconsistent Match Review Panel outcomes gave us some grief, while the emergence of Michael Barlow as a star for Fremantle suggested to us that home-grown, ‘mature’-age recruits would be a better bet than international fancies like the Bombers’ Irishman, Michael Quinn.

Mark Williams’ sacking by Port Adelaide brought to an end to his death of a thousand cuts, while debut umpire Corey Bowen’s five first-half 50-metre penalties against the Bombers had us almost apoplectic with rage. We didn’t have long to wait for retribution as Bowen didn’t feature in the list of umpires for matches played the following week!

Meanwhile, Jeff Gieschen fantasised that his charges umpired “to the DVD” each and every week! Yeah, sure Jeff, and we’re a dead ringer for George Clooney.

The AFL allowed a police-check armband for the Hawks and Saints, but no such leniency for the Bombers and their Clash for Cancer.

Einsteinian concepts of curved space were employed to justify Lance Franklin’s ‘natural arc’ when kicking for goal, to allow umpires not to call play on. Truly one of the more breathtaking rationalisations from Gieschen’s mob for the year.

August
Surprise, surprise, Steve McBurney and over-zealous umpiring caught our attention at the start of the month, but not quite as much as the huge cast we found encasing our left wrist and forearm, courtesy of a fall. A nicely snapped radius bone in what the medical fraternity know as a Colles fracture.

Jeff Gieschen, ignoring previous indiscretions by his charges in making scoring decisions, suggested talk and consultation would be more effective in weeding errors out of goal umpiring than an extra goal umpire at each end. We must conclude that goal umpires are extraordinarily well-paid, since the AFL seem incredibly reluctant to employ another eight of them!

Finally, the talk began that James Hird would replace Matthew Knights as Essendon coach. As we now know, Knights was gone by the end of the month and Hird was being very coy. Smoke? Fire? We remain unconvinced by the denials of preplanning.

September
We highlighted the MRP’s failure to act against blatant staging when Jarrad Waite lodged an Oscar-worthy entry against the Swans, while the AFL world debated the merits of free kicks that are “technically there, but . . .”

An exodus of almost biblical proportions at Brisbane in the previous summer and the failure of the big name import to have a meaningful impact on-field left the club looking rather sickly.

And then there was the Grand Final entertainment — a highlight of our year. This year’s baffling progress of the Premiership Cup from a tethered hot air balloon, through the hands of Tom Harley, to Peter McKenna and ‘Cowboy’ Neale was underwhelming in the extreme.

Fortunately, as we now know, the game itself lived up to all the hype and more. The Saints were a bee’s dick away from breaking their drought, needing only a mildly eccentric bounce of the ball for Steven Milne to goal in the dying seconds and secure the game. Instead the ball bounced at 120° and we were back the following week.

In a fitting finish to the on-field year, in the drawn Grand Final, emergency umpire Steve McBurney spent more time on the field than most of the players.

Oh, and, quite unexpectedly, James Hird was appointed coach of the Bombers, in case you missed that news!

October
Of course, the Grand Final replay imposed footy on October even more strongly than usual, with the ’Woods downing the Saints in no uncertain terms — sadly. AussieRulesBlog has no great affection for the Saints, but any day that Collingwood loses is a good day.

In the biggest jaw-dropping moment of the year, Saints coaches nominated perennial ‘rabbit-in-the-headlights’ Zac Dawson as their best player in the grand final replay.

Bomber Thompson left the Cats, taking the media world completely by surprise, and the impact of expansion teams on the Gold Coast and in Sydney meant we’d have a six-ring circus for the first round of the pre-season competition.

November
Once again taking everyone by surprise, Bomber Thompson was announced as senior assistant to James Hird at Essendon.

A trickle of assistant coaches leaving St Kilda became a flood, leaving coach Ross Lyon to book a telephone booth for the footy department’s Xmas party.

December
The FFA’s soap bubble of optimism for hosting the World Cup was unceremoniously burst, leaving Frank Lowy and Ben Buckley wearing egg makeup.

The Demons released their ‘cutting-edge’ new uniform, to a general yawn, Gary Ablett Jnr let it be known that Bomber Thompson’s problem was that he was trying to coach the football team and, just for good measure, the AFL announced another slew of temporary rule changes for the pre-season competition — some OK, some laughable.

And that’s how it was at AussieRulesBlog for 2010. We look forward to having our regular readers back for 2011 when, once again, we’ll prick a few balloons and renew our campaign to Release the Giesch!

Happy New Year and have a safe, enjoyable and productive 2011. Go Bombers!
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Friday, December 24, 2010

A tangled web?

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Without having seen the much-publicised photographs of Nick Riewoldt ‘un-clothed’, as it were, we can’t make any specific comment. But the Taiwanese animation was pretty funny.

Regular readers will, we hope, forgive us for being to the point, so to speak, on this issue.

If, as claimed by Riewoldt, these pictures were taken by Sam Gilbert, what were they still doing on his computer? And how did a 17-year-old know the files were there, and then get sufficient access to his computer to be able to copy the files.

There’s clearly more to this than meets the eye — perhaps unless you’ve seen the pictures. . .

Oh, what a tangled web, Nick.
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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Not Really Likely (NRL), Greg

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It’s probably fair to say that Greg Inglis’ management haven’t been fielding recruiting calls from Mensa since the Storm’s salary cap shenanigans were revealed.

 

After a handshake agreement with the Broncos, Inglis decides the Rabbitohs are a better deal and loads up on sponsorship contracts. Unexpectedly, and to its great credit, the NRL didn’t roll over and allow Russel Crowe to tickle their tummy.

 

Now, having poisoned his chalice at Brisbane, and without too many other likely options, Inglis is reportedly speaking with Essendon about a possible move to AFL.

 

(Scene from ‘Lost in Space’): Robot appears stage left. “Danger, James Hird! Danger!”

 

We love our Bombers at AussieRulesBlog and we dutifully appeared at Windy Hill this morning along with many others of the faithful to cast an appreciative eye over the Hird-led Bombers for the first time. We faithfully recorded our membership video slot that “We are One”, as it were.

 

Unlike Karmichael Hunt and Israel Folau, Inglis is considering AFL as something of a last resort. He doesn’t want to be at Essendon (or any other AFL club). Regardless of whatever professionalism he exhibits, and despite his obvious rugby league-based athletic prowess, it’s hard to imagine he can give the 150% commitment required to make the shift.

 

Please, James. Please, David and Ian. We don’t need this distraction and we don’t need a champion try scorer!

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Sunday, December 19, 2010

Season’s Greetings

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And so this is Christmas, and what have you done,

Another year over, and a new one just begun

Just after the thirtieth anniversary of the senseless death of the incomparable John Lennon, it seems somehow appropriate to open this post with those words.

 

This period leading up to Christmas is truly the ‘graveyard shift’ for those of us commenting on AFL football. All teams are flooding their members and potential members with not-quite-specific expectations of bumper years, bumper recruits and the sweet, sweet scent of on-field success.

 

At the end of this, our third year of AussieRulesBlog, we’ve recorded our highest total of posts. We’ve remained true to our pledge to ourselves not to attempt to indulge in weekly reviews and end up posting weakly reviews as some sites do. We’ve also resisted the urge to view ourselves as newsbreakers or even early commenters on breaking news.

 

AussieRulesBlog is very much about, we hope, well-considered positions on important issues in the game. It would be easy to make rash and ill-considered statements to drive traffic to our internet door. Frankly, we love the game far too much to consider allowing it to be a vehicle for self-aggrandisement.

 

So, to those who read this post, thank you for taking the time to do so. If you are a regular visitor, again thank you. We wish all of you, regular or not, the very best for the festive season. Celebrate in moderation and take a few moments to consider those less well-off than yourself.

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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

They just can’t leave it alone

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The AFL’s announcement of temporary rule changes for the pre-season competition in 2011 further reinforces the notion that, given a toy to play with, the boys just can’t resist fiddling with it until it’s broken!

 

One of the temporary rules, a free kick against the last player to touch the ball before it goes out of bounds, was introduced, according to Adrian Anderson (reported in The Age) “to provide another point of difference”. This is the same thinking that is ruining cricket with wall-to-wall Twenty-20 ‘hit-and-giggle’ matches. Given the average attendances at domestic Sheffield Shield and one-day matches, perhaps cricket administrators could be allowed some leniency, but no such situation confronts AFL football. We need ‘Twenty-20’ football like we need a collective hole in the head. JUST STOP FIDDLING WITH IT!

 

Of the other rules, the one of most concern is video replays for goal umpiring decisions. Firstly, again according to Anderson (in The Age), in 2010 there were fewer than ten (10) errors in ten thousand scoring decisions. That’s an error rate of less than one tenth of one percent! Hardly a compelling rationale.

 

Secondly, the rule as announced is inherently inequitable. In the age of immediate kick-out following a behind, there cannot be any review of an incorrect ‘behind’ decision. Only a ‘goal’ decision will provide sufficient time for a video review to be performed. This is ill-considered at best.

 

AussieRulesBlog wholeheartedly agrees with free-kicking players who drag the ball in under another player in an effort to win a free kick. We think it’s fair enough to give a player awarded a 50-metre penalty outside the 50-metre arc a choice of the penalty and six-point goal or no penalty and the chance at a nine-point goal.

 

But we have plenty of reservations about boundary umpires paying free kicks at stoppages. There are already too many interpretations of contentious rules on the ground with three field umpires. A further four different interpretations is just going to make a mockery of the rule book.

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Monday, December 13, 2010

Wagging the Cat

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Regular readers will know that AussieRulesBlog hasn’t been totally convinced that the smoke around the appointments of James Hird and Mark Thompson at Essendon doesn’t obscure a little spark or two.

Of course, Thompson’s situation walking away from a contract to coach Geelong and his fairly public falling out with his star player, Gary Ablett Jnr, mean that there’s a lot more media miles to be wrung out yet.

Nevertheless, we wondered about this quote from young ‘Gazza’:
"Rather than just trying to be a coach, he [Thompson] was a very controlling person, trying to run the medical department, the contract negotiations, and if it wasn't his way, it was nobody's way."

We know we don’t always have the right end of the stick here at AussieRulesBlog Central, but we’ve been pretty much of the opinion that if the club is playing crap footy, it’s the senior coach’s neck which is on the chopping block.

Why then would the senior coach not want to have the medical department running in sync with his own ideas?

And surely, even at the “Do we want this bloke or not?” level, the coach has to have some say in contracts.

We can only hope that Bluey McKenna remembers to check with Gazza before he announces any decisions.
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Friday, December 10, 2010

Rookie rewards

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Back in November, we lamented what looked like the end of Robert Eddy’s AFL career. Thus, it was pleasing to note that the Saints had selected him in the Rookie draft, but there’s a catch.

As we were feeling pleased for Eddy, we recalled a story in the Hun a few days ago focussing on delisted Dons rookie, Marcus Marigliani.

Prior to being drafted, Marigliani says he was earning around $900k as a carpenter, plus another $30k or so playing footy. As a rookie with the Dons in 2010, effectively a full-time job, he cleared just $27,000.

So, while we celebrate Robert Eddy getting another chance, he’s going to have moths coming out of his wallet in 2011, going from being a contracted player to a rookie. Not much of a reward for having been good enough to be picked in a Grand Final team in consecutive weeks.

In another story, newly-returned assistant coach, club great Robert Harvey, mentions in passing that coach Ross Lyon has told Eddy he has a few things to work on — after being good enough to be chosen in a Grand final team in consecutive weeks. We reckon Lyon might have a few things to work on too just quietly.

We know that not everyone in a Grand Final team is a champion. There have to be ‘indians’ as well as ‘chiefs’ in every team. Nevertheless, we can’t help wondering, again, how Eddy will feel when he comes across ex-Richmond fringe player Dean Polo, who we reckon will be pocketing a decent bit more than $27k after being picked up in the national draft after Eddy had been delisted.

If it were us in Eddy’s spot, we reckon we’d put a good dose of extra venom into competitive work when we spied Polo on the other side of the contest.
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Saturday, December 04, 2010

Dees in a spin

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It’s not only politicians that indulge in spin. The Melbourne Football Club is spinning so furiously that they’ll be suffering from vertigo for the next ten years.

The Demons have unveiled a ‘cutting edge’ new guernsey (although the Herald-Sun bogans refer to it as a ‘jumper’).Club great David Neitz, never the most assured of media performers, has been corralled into doing a piece to camera and some voiceovers in a web presentation provided to members.

Neitz explains that the new guernsey design features a high collar as a reminder of past champions.  . . .  . . . WTF? Tom Scully is going to play like Ron Barassi because his guernsey now sports a dinky little Mandarin collar? Oh, for goodness sakes.

Darker shades of red and blue also, apparently, evoke memories of the club’s “true” heritage. In the last forty years there can be hardly any hues of red and blue that have not graced the Demons’ playing uniform at some point.

The red yoke now has a deeper V which is “more demonic” apparently, and [spin, spin, spin, spin, spin].

There’s no doubt this stuff goes down well with members.

AussieRulesBlog recently received a link to the Bombers’ “I’m One!” membership advertisement and we confidently expect to feature in it in the not too distant future. No doubt supporters of other clubs will see it as arrogant, crass, and so on. That’s understandable.

We recall a Melbourne Football Club CD released many years ago. The silky-voiced Christine Sullivan sang the club theme song in an extremely slow tempo as a background to all living MFC players (I think) reciting their name and games total. This section of the CD was played on radio at the time and we freely admit to a couple of crocodile tears while listening to it. VERY emotional stuff.

And that’s where the unveiling of the new Demons uniform plunges into spin, because it desperately tries to pull on emotional heartstrings, but it’s only about what the current lot will be wearing. It’s not about doing.
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Friday, December 03, 2010

FFA soap bubble of optimism burst

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We at AussieRulesBlog Central feel some sympathy for those who allowed themselves to be seduced by Frank Lowy’s boundless optimism that Australia could somehow secure the hosting rights for the World Cup.

 

In the cold, hard light of a Zurich day, the FFA bid had a snowball’s chance in hell, and that’s the way the votes fell.

 

Lowy and Ben Buckley must have known from the start they they were pushing a blanc mange up a cliff with a stick. Still, if they wanted to delude themselves and those world game aficionados who couldn’t see reason for romance, that’s fine.

 

What we object to was the $45 million of public money that was tipped into this farcical circus, not to mention the AFL being hounded into spending time negotiating a stadium availability solution for an event that had less chance of coming off than we have of being discovered as the long-lost scion of some mega-wealthy family.

 

At the end, there’s always the slim possibility of oil revenues drying up before 2020, leaving the Qataris unable to fulfil their obligations. Now THAT would be a delicious irony.

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Sunday, November 28, 2010

New ‘clash’ strip for ‘Barcodes’

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A very tight election result in Victoria has overshadowed the announcement that Collingwood — from this point on to be known as the Barcodes here at AussieRulesBlogwill wear a clash strip against North Melbourne.

Although AussieRulesBlog cannot see the ‘clash’ with North Melbourne’s vertical royal blue stripes, the Kangaroos have recently been forced into impersonating Argentina’s Pumas when playing Collingwood — even for their own ‘home’ games!

Collingwood's 2010 strips (home, away and clash)

North's 2010 strips (home, away and clash)


For 2011, the AFL have announced Collingwood will wear a newly-designed clash guernsey when playing North Melbourne. We are at a loss to see how this new alternative makes any material difference, especially since we didn’t consider there was a practical problem in the first place.

 Collingwood's 2011 'clash' strip — to be used against North

Perhaps the Barcodes could be forced to play in a washed out grey-striped guernsey when fronting the Kangaroos?



We acknowledge that our own beloved Bombers have similarly resisted AFL pressure to design a radically-different clash strip.

Further on clash strips, we consider the average response — design an essentially all-white uniform with a small splash of traditional colours — to psychologically emasculate the team so uniformed. Sure, there are wins in these all-but-all-white clash strips, but even the brawniest players look rather less fearsome and significantly more insipid in these white uniforms. Clubs should leave ‘whites’ where they belong — on the cricket field!
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Saturday, November 20, 2010

Media hyperbole over video ‘leak’

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Handwringing over the apparently hacked release of an Essendon web video of recruiting manager Adrian Dodoro extolling the virtues of Shaun Atley simply doesn’t pass the logic test.

 

It’s pretty obvious that the Bombers thought the best player they could expect to be available at pick 8 was Atley. When Dyson Heppell hadn’t been called to that point, they decided to reassess.

 

Hence the expected drafting of Atley was replaced by the unexpected drafting of Heppell. Not too hard to figure out, we think. And hardly an embarrassment for the club. More mainstream media hyperbole.

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Oh, so close

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We got to thinking after putting together our previous post. Those now–ex-AFL players would have had a tough day following the draft yesterday, but perhaps none tougher than Robert Eddy.

 

Eddy has come within two of the proverbial bees’ dicks of virtual football immortality. Instead, he’s probably destined to be a footnote.

 

Readers will recall that Eddy was considered unlucky not to have made the Saints’ 2009 Grand Final team. He followed that up by playing in both the 2010 Grand Finals.

 

But for an unlucky bounce of the ball at the end of the drawn 2010 Grand Final, Eddy would be the proud owner of a Premiership player’s medal. With a little luck in selection the year before, he could have been a Matthew Scarlett toe-poke away from another Premiership medal.

 

And now, aged only 22, it appears his AFL career is over.

 

If anyone tries to tell you that AFL is not a tough game, remind them how a young bloke who’s done everything right to get himself into the team for the biggest game of the year has been ground up and spat out.

 

What may stick in Eddy’s craw will be the Saints’ final two draft selections after he has been cast adrift: ex-Cat Ryan Gamble and ex-Tiger Dean Polo. It’s fanciful, in our view, to consider that Polo could be picked in a team for a Grand Final and Gamble had certainly not secured a regular spot in the Cats’ lineup. We wonder whether the Polo recruitment will rival that previous ex-Tiger Saint, Aaron Fiora’s ‘success’.

 

These are curious decisions and, along with the recent exodus of coaching staff, must place some sort of question mark over coach Ross Lyon’s future.

 

And in a late announcement, West Coast have delisted Ashley Hansen. Interesting timing, coming the day after the draft. We’re not that confident that Hansen would have been selected by anyone, but the bloke is surely entitled to have a chance to throw his hat into the ring. We understand there’s little place for sentiment in the modern game, but we think West Coast have treated Hansen particularly poorly in this.

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Friday, November 19, 2010

What the ?

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The draft may well have been ‘compromised’ by the Suns’ plethora of early picks — we’re not entirely convinced on that score — but we can’t help feeling there are some other issues.

 

From The Age’s report of the draft:

 

Luke Mitchell: “Missed much of the year with a shoulder injury. . .”

 

Wayne Hughes, Carlton’s recruiting manager: “Luke Mitchell is a centre half-forward who missed most of the season with a knee reconstruction.”

 

Some anatomy classes are in order for either Wayne or The Age’s reporter!

 

Adrian Dodoro (Essendon’s recruiting manager): “It was a year where we consulted our coaching staff. . .”

 

Gee, that’s an explanation of the Bombers’ woes we hadn’t counted on! In what circumstances would you not consult the coaching staff on the draft?

 

Neil Balme (Geelong football manager) apparently dribbled this into his bib about choosing to use the Ablett compensation pick this year: “Probably the logic is if you've got a player you can spend a couple of years working on him, you'll get a better player probably than a first-round pick at the time. . .

 

And how good would the first-round pick be after spending a couple of years on him, Balmy? Or should we say, Barmy? And let’s just quietly gloss over the fact that, at 15, Billie Smedts is a first-round pick.

 

The draft is really like Christmas time for the clubs, except that they get to pick their own presents having previously had the chance to push, prod, poke, shove and x-ray the packages. The uniformly positive reviews from club spokespeople, when intelligible, have much in common with toddlers mauling the latest grant from “Santa”.

 

The list of probably now–ex-AFL players who had nominated, but were not chosen, casts a momentary pall over the raucous enthusiasm. Some, like Jay Neagle, have another possible lifeline, but for most last night was the end of their glory days. We feel for them and hope their resilience allows them to weather this blow to self-esteem. In our dotage, we envy them the experience of even having been part of an AFL locker room. Had Lucifer asked, we probably would have given our left leg for the chance to run out just once. . .  [Sigh]

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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

High-level rules

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We’re a bit dim here at AussieRulesBlog Central sometimes. We’d be most grateful if some knowledgeable reader could enlighten us on the benefit of high altitude training in the US (or anywhere else for that matter) in November for an AFL season between March and September played at sea level.

 

Our very basic understanding of physiology suggests that, by March, said high-altitude trainers will have reacclimatised to sea-level conditions again. If the “high-altitude” training were done at Mt Wycheproof (15m), there’d effectively be no wait for the reacclimatisation!

 

If the 2011 Grand Final were to be played at the top of Mt Kosciusko, perhaps there would be an argument for spending a couple of weeks there beforehand (assuming you’d actually made it!).

 

Perhaps the Eagles, Dockers, Lions and Suns could go down to Mawson for a couple of weeks to prepare themselves for the Melbourne winter?

 

Please! Someone explain to us how this is not a joke.

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Thursday, November 11, 2010

12 angry men

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If you were on a jury trying the Bombers for murder and there was this much circumstantial evidence, the vote to convict would surely be 12-0.

 

AussieRulesBlog has already noted our disquiet over the sacking of Knights and the smoke of Machiavellian machinations surrounding Hird’s ascendency. The (according to the media) open secret of Mark Thompson’s arrival at Windy Hill and the ‘leaked’ evidence for accusations that he had been having a tete-a-tete with the Bombers for some time do nothing but add fuel to the suspicions of conspiracy theorists (and impartial observers).

 

We also noted our receipt of a personal call from Essendon CEO, Ian Robson, assuring us that there was absolutely nothing untoward in the recruitment of Hird

 

Nevertheless, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that someone at Essendon, presumably President David Evans and/or Robson, has decided to play very hard ball indeed! I hope the Bombers don't need the other clubs' support on anything important in the near future (10–15 years), because the most they'll get will be the remaining steam off some very, very old crap.

 

Of course, if there's a flag at the end of the rainbow, it will all be judged a masterstroke (in the media).

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Monday, November 08, 2010

Hearsay or crystal ball?

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Back in the mists of time — 4 November 2010 to be precise; less than a week ago — Michael Gleeson wrote this in The Age:

[Mark] Thompson is expected to be appointed by Essendon this week, probably today, in an assistant coaching role with the Bombers after quitting the Cats on October 4.  . . . Essendon is understood to have only been waiting on chief executive Ian Robson to return to work before making the announcement.

Less than a week later on 8 Nov, via AAP, The Age reports:

James Hird says it would be great to have Mark Thompson join his new-look Essendon coaching staff, while insisting the two-time Geelong premiership mentor has yet to sign a deal with the Bombers.

To be fair, Gleeson’s report did include a little uncertainty — expected, probably today, understood. Nevertheless, merely four days later it looks more like soothsaying than reporting.

Again, to be fair to Gleeson, there has seemed to have been a certain amount of Machiavellian smoke around Windy Hill over recent months. Nevertheless, there’s an indecent distance between probably today and what has eventuated.

We don’t think it’s too much to expect reporting in the mass media to have more credibility than Julius Caesar reading the auguries as favourable before proceeding to the Senate on the Ides of March.
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Sunday, November 07, 2010

That special “something” . . .

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Every club website has lashings of it on every page at this time of year. It’s what keeps us all fronting up year after year.

 

Club membership brochures sell it by the truckload, as does every overly-optimistic report of pre-Christmas training.

 

It is embodied in every AFL draft nomination form — some for the chance to show their wares, for others the chance to make amends or make a new start. Every scouting report carries at least some element of it.

 

The upcoming national draft will play on it as every club parades their potential new superstars to their supporter base. (Well, perhaps not EVERY club. On the Gold Coast people will still be asking, “Gary who?”, and the good burghers of western Sydney will still be wondering who this “Sheeds” chap is and what he is on.)

 

For the black and white army, still drunk on replays of their team’s humbling of the Saints in October, it revolves around “dynasties”. For the seven beaten finalists, it centres on figuring out how to bridge that gap and take that next step.

 

For those teams at the other end of the ladder, it often comes borne by a new coach or a gun new recruit — like that Gary bloke! For the new coach who doesn’t bring it, there is only waiting for the inevitable.

 

Rusted-on supporters often see it everywhere, even though it shimmers like a mirage.

 

It’s the same intangible commodity that Barack Obama mobilised two years ago with the chant, “Yes we can!” It’s the same commodity that gained Kevin Rudd leadership of the ALP and then the Prime Ministership. When both Obama and Rudd failed to live up to it, their popularity sank like a housebrick in a pond.

 

For the lack of it, marginalised people consider the unthinkable.

 

What is it?

 

Hope.

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Friday, November 05, 2010

Saints avoid scrutiny

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Is there something in the water down at Linton Street?

 

Ross Lyon will be working with pretty much a completely new coaching team for the 2011 season.

 

Brian Royal is the latest to depart the Saints’ coaching team, following Leigh Tudor, Andy Lovell, Tony Elshaugh and Stephen Silvagni.

 

It’s understandable for a coaching group to break up when the senior coach moves on, but, on the back of three successful years and the senior coach remaining in charge, it seems strange to see such dramatic change.

 

Also strange is the lack of rumour and innuendo — although we’re here doing our best to ramp something up! — from the mainstream media soothsayers. Why don’t we have Mike Sheahan or Caroline Wilson or Patrick Smith waffling on about behind the scenes troubles? Or is it just that the five weren’t keen on travelling out to Casey?

 

And I suppose the Saints’ younger players will be a lot harder at the ball with Paul Hudson as new development coach. . .

 

Winter weather in Melbourne, but no football! It’s doing our minds in!

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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Pre-season six-ring circus

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With two additional teams to roster in, the pre-season competition was always going to be in for a significant shake-up. But we’re not sure that the round-robin format for round one doesn’t provide more disadvantage than advantage. And we don’t have a better alternative to put forward as we write.

 

The roster for round one looks like a three-ring circus, but the real sting in the tail comes for the team that gets a ‘rest’.

 

Teams with a break are going to have a hard time keeping their guys active after forty minutes of footy, but without tiring them too much. Entering the third ‘game’ with a list that has cooled down and then has to warm up again is going to be a huge challenge. Are there 28 exercise bikes available at each venue to keep the legs moving?

 

Teams starting in the second ‘game’ will start ‘cold’ against a fully energised and warmed up squad, as will the ‘break’ team after its break.

 

Clearly, the team playing the first two ‘games’ has a substantial head start over their pool rivals, and the ‘break’ team looks set to run a significant soft-tissue injury risk (Again, we haven’t begun to consider alternatives — and it doesn’t matter because this is what’s going to happen!).

 

What’s immediately striking about the announcement is that, at the date of the press release, Operations chief, Adrian Anderson, is still consulting with club fitness departments on solutions to the dilemma.

 

How long have the AFL known about this arrangement? Did someone doodle it on the back of an envelope last week, or have they been working on the pre-season fixture for eight or ten months? Smart money would punt on the latter, yet continuing consultation suggests it’s a relatively recent ‘solution’.

 

It was only two extra teams, yet the ramifications are only starting to be felt.

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Sunday, October 17, 2010

Great Scott!

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Reports that Geelong will announce Chris Scott as their new senior coach suggest that the Geelong Football Club has learned the lesson afforded when it appointed Mark Thompson a decade ago.

 

Thompson, it should be remembered, was a no-frills, no-nonsense half back through three of Essendon’s recent Premierships, the last as captain.

 

Immediately preceding Thompson, neither the flamboyant Malcolm Blight, nor the showy Gary Ayers could manage silverware for the Cats (nor a swag of ex-Geelong players since 1963).

 

It’s worth noting the adjectives we’re using for these three. No frills, flamboyant, showy. And which one brought home the silverware?

 

If the reports are proved correct, we think Scott is an inspired choice, for the simple reason that he had many of the same attributes as a footballer that Thompson had. The style was certainly different and the Scott boys certainly played for keeps, but would happily accept the labels ‘no-frills’ and ‘no-nonsense’ we think.

 

Twin brother Brad has had an excellent start to his senior coaching career, dragging the Kangaroos to the brink of finals contention when nearly everyone — not AussieRulesBlog, we hasten to add — had them set for the lower reaches of the ladder. No doubt that indefinable ‘Shinboner spirit’ played its part, but we think Scott also understands what is needed for his lesser lights to contribute at a level that helps the team get the greatest benefit from their stars.

 

There’s one other benefit from going outside of the Thompson coaching ‘family’ — a completely different message for the players, delivered with a new voice. Just as Thompson could be jaded after ten years, the players may well relish a new flavour to their footy and their pre-season.

 

Adding to the interest will be the new Hird regime at Essendon. It would be hard to imagine a greater contrast than between Hird and the Scott brothers as players. How well superstar Hird understands the minds of mere mortals will go a long way to determining how well the Bombers perform over the next four years.

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Saturday, October 16, 2010

Trade Week 2010 reflections

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Last week, we pondered the effects, a year on, of Brisbane coach Michael Voss’ brainsnap decision to recruit Brendan Fevola by offering up Michael Rischitelli and Daniel Bradshaw.

 

Well, the jury is in. Only the Tigers deemed it necessary to offer a player up without his asking for a move. It’s not all that clear to us why they would have done so, since a team that relied so heavily for scoring on one player, Jack Riewoldt, would seem to be in need of a forward foil with some goal sense. Andrew Collins has seemed, on the few viewings we’ve had of him, to have looked like he could provide a useful contest and some goal sense. Shaun Grigg seems to be more of a defender come midfielder. Curious. Nevertheless, we are Damian Hardwick fans, so we’re prepared to see what happens.

 

What has been stranger to watch has been the merry-go-round of assistant coaches this year. Of course, they all arrive at their new home terribly “excited” about their new team’s prospects.

 

Gavin Brown’s exit from Magpieland and Brendan McCartney’s “defection” to Essendon were the biggest surprises sprung. Outgoing Geelong President Frank Costa seemed resigned in a television interview tonight to the viewthat Mark Thompson will also bob up at Bomberland sooner or later.

 

Brown is probably the more interesting move. His three years coaching the Magpies’ ‘magoos’ suggests he harbours senior coaching ambitions. This year’s Malthouse–Buckley slow-motion coup agreement would appear to close off any avenues at the “Which sponsor do we have this year” Centre. We wouldn’t have thought that assistant to Ratten would look terribly impressive on a CV, but perhaps no-one better credentialed made an offer. Will Brown’s blood boil, or his head spin ’round a la Linda Blair in The Exorcist, when he has to sing We are the navy blues. . .?

 

The framing of the media coverage on the McCartney change has been interesting. A “defection”? Of course the spectre of Thompson turning up as Hird’s mentor, and persistent reports that it has been on the cards for months, seems to suggest some labyrinthine machinations, but defection? We should also note that McCartney had been ‘demoted’ from an assistant role at Sleepy Hollow to overseeing up and comers in the Academy squad this year. It’s hard not to conclude that Thompson had a significant part in that decision. The coach’s rooms at Windy Hill might be an interesting place to be if McCartney and Thompson are to be reunited.

 

On a recent visit to the grandly-titled Windy Hill ‘Precinct’, we didn’t detect anything resembling Checkpoint Charlie (younger people click here for an explanation), so would that mean that the Bombers are on the side of freedom and the Cat Empire are the forces of darkness? Well, cold-war defection did go both ways and we are thoroughly red and black! :-)

 

And there’s only 110-odd or 120-odd days ’til we’re back into the pre-season footy!!  :-(  We can only hope that the Ashes Tests will offer something more diverting than recent summers have managed. The Poms look to have put a decent squad together and the Aussies attack and batting have more holes than a colander. Please let it be close with a series win to the Aussies on the last day of the last Test.

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Friday, October 08, 2010

Mitchell oversteps

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No, not a cricket story about Mitchell Johnson bowling a no ball!

 

It’s typical of self-appointed guardians of society like Neil Mitchell that they take it upon themselves to flout conventions, regulations or orders protecting the identities of those suspected of some criminal activity.

 

Of course, there’s more than enough precedent in everyday media. Television news broadcasts routinely name people being arrested or being taken into custody, often even when pixellating their images.

 

It’s reasonable to ask why high-profile footballers should be treated any differently.

 

But the real point is that NO-ONE should have their name broadcast before being found guilty.

 

This principle is even more applicable in accusations of sexual assault which can turn on the participants’ varying understanding of consent as it applied in the context of the alleged assault.

 

Let’s be clear that there should be no quarter allowed if the assault is proven to the satisfaction of the law and that the victim must be protected as far as possible from further harm.

 

But let’s also be clear that those accused or suspected of sexual assault are entitled to not bear the opprobrium if the case is not proven.

 

For at least some sections of the community, Steven Milne, Leigh Montagna and Andrew Lovett will be considered sexual predators whether charges were/are sustained or not.

 

It is reasonable and right to guard the identity of the females involved in these cases. It should also be reasonable and right to similarly guard the identities of the males involved up to the point that they are convicted.

 

No conviction, no ‘name and shame’.

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Thursday, October 07, 2010

We know nuttin’

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A report in The Age says the Saints’ coaching staff adjudged Zac Dawson the Saints’ best player in the Grand Final replay.

 

All of us here at AussieRulesBlog Central are a bit reluctant to go to town on individuals — other than Jeff Gieschen, Scott McLaren, and perennial favourite, Stephen McBurney.

 

Zac Dawson the best-performed Saint in the GF replay. Huh?

 

We must confess we regard Dawson as one of the more ordinary players going around at the elite level. His decision-making and disposal are questionable at best, and along with a physique little changed since the monstering by “Pebbles” Rocca which saw him banished back to the Hawks’ reserves, leaves him disadvantaged against all but the weakest of the opposition’s forwards.

 

Zac Dawson the best-performed Saint in the GF replay. Nope. It still doesn’t make any sense.

 

Frankly, the only person looking more lost than Zac last Saturday was Kosi.

 

Zac Dawson the best-performed Saint in the GF replay, and the equal of Hayes and Goddard for the finals series. Please!!! If Ross and his colleagues think this, then, as we foreshadowed in the title of the post, we know nuttin’!

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Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Fevola trade — a year on

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It will be interesting, come next Monday afternoon, to look at the trades that have been done and consider the flow-on effects of last year’s disastrous play for Brendan Fevola by Brisbane coach, Michael Voss.

 

How many clubs would be willing to countenance losing club champion Rischitelli, elite goal-kicker Bradshaw and emerging star Henderson for the questionable social skills and on-field narcissism of Fevola.

 

Time will tell whether Voss’ arrogance has condemned Brisbane to an extended period at the less-glorious end of the ladder, but a certain amount of trust between coach and playing group must surely have also been lost in the transaction.

 

Who’s really to know whether Hawthorn have already paid a price for hawking [no pun intended] Campbell Brown around the traps without his knowledge? Is it credible that a man who seemed to epitomise the team spirit of ‘the family club’ would pick up his little red wagon and head north otherwise?

 

However much we may dislike the Trade Week ‘meat market’, it has provided a relatively ordered and civilised means for players to escape poisonous environments and make a new start. More so, the dramatic concessions afforded to the Suns and GWS have empowered some players to visit retribution upon clubs when they’ve been treated shabbily.

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Monday, October 04, 2010

We’ll huff and we’ll puff

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We wonder about the deliberations of the AFL’s Laws of the Game committee, comprising Messers Adrian Anderson, Kevin Bartlett, Luke Darcy, Andrew McKay, Leigh Matthews, Matthew Pavlich, Luke Power, Rowan Sawers and Michael Sexton.

 

Changing the composition of the bench for the 2011 season from four interchange players to three interchange and one once-only substitute will reduce congestion, increase fairness and, we assume, reduce injuries — or so the AFL would have us believe.

 

On ‘fairness’, teams losing a player early in a game will be less disadvantaged by not losing a fourth bench rotation player. Well, OK, but it’s a pretty marginal argument given the Saints’ second half comeback with at least one ‘cripple’ on the bench in 2010 GF #1.

 

Great play is made of the increase in average interchanges from 58 per game in 2007 to 117 in 2010. Does the committee seriously suggest that there’ll be an average of substantially less than 87 — that’s three-quarters of 117 — in 2011?

 

Will Collingwood only rotate Dane Swan once per quarter now that they’re one down on the bench versus 2010? Of course not.

 

Pretty clearly, midfielders, along with high forwards and their opponents, will continue to be high-rotation players with deep forwards and deep backs the likely candidates to spend more time on the ground.

 

This effective 25% reduction in available interchanges versus 2010 will also, according to Adrian Anderson, reduce defensive pressure and increase disposal efficiency.

 

These expectations fly squarely in the face of common sense, and history suggests coaching staffs will, by next Tuesday at the latest, have worked out how they can manipulate this change to their teams’ advantage.

 

Apparently there is also an injury trend which will be arrested. Quite what that trend is isn’t spelled out.

 

Perhaps Anderson and his committee could have done the game a greater service by mandating that the Gieschen gaggle use the 2010 special ‘Finals’ edition of the rule book from the first bounce of the 2011 pre-season comp?

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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Tainted love: Redux

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We were unexpectedly speaking personally with Essendon CEO, Ian Robson, today.

 

Despite the Machiavellian appearances of the later half of the 2010 season for the Dons, he convinced us that the Knights dismissal and the Hird ascendancy were not linked.

 

We remain sceptics for the Hird appointment rather than enthusiasts.

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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Tainted love

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The apparently Machiavellian machinations that see James Hird appointed to coach Essendon from 2011 leave the club’s and Hird’s credibility in tatters.

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Retain ‘Finals’ rulebook

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It seems like almost everybody agrees that the 2010 Final Series has been umpired extremely well, Grand Final Mark I even more so.

 

Consistency is a concept we at AussieRulesBlog often associate with umpiring performance. For the umpteenth time, we make the point that the interpretations applied during the final series, and the Grand Final in particular, are seriously different from those employed at the start of the season.

 

It’s hardly the first time these observations have been made. Each year in recent times there are early-season laments about over-zealous umpiring, but by finals time a degree of sanity has prevailed.

 

Must we go through this again in 2011? Surely even that muppet, Jeff Gieschen, who masquerades as AFL Director of Umpiring, can see that people are very happy with the umpiring performance during the finals series and make the decision to keep those interpretations in place for the whole of season 2011?

 

We can’t let the 2010 season slip away (almost!) without another mention of chief zealot, Stephen McBurney, who spent more time on the ground, in the role of emergency umpire, than the three umpires charged with umpiring the 2010 Grand Final. Pundits gave Darren Goldspink a hard time for hogging the limelight, but McBurney puts him well and truly in the shade!

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Monday, September 27, 2010

Grand final and its aftermath

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No, that lower case ‘f’ in the heading is intentional — note to non-pedants, it should be a capital if it refers to the Grand Final (see?).

 

What an amazing game. The Magpies looked unstoppable early in the first quarter, then the Saints steadied and all but squared the ledger. The Magpies dominated again, but failed to take full toll where it counts — on the scoreboard.

 

In the second half the Saints found a resolve and determination that had been lacking to draw themselves back into the contest and hit the lead in the final ten minutes — only to be headed again by the Magpies.

 

Had the ball bounced as it has ninety-nine percent of the season, Milne has a gift of a goal with barely a minute to play. The footy gods decreed otherwise and a point sealed an enthralling contest. It was, truly, a grand final in every sense of those words.

 

We here at AussieRulesBlog Central are traditionalists. We don’t find anything in the least wrong with a drawn Grand Final. On the contrary, it has everything that is best and proudest about Australian Rules embodied in it.

 

So, that was the good part. What about the rest of the day?

 

Let’s start with catering and call it what it was — a shambles. The Great Southern Stand still looks pretty sprightly, but if the mooted makeover does nothing more than make the catering outlets moderately efficient, footy fans of all persuasions should go down on their knees and offer up thanks.

 

And then there’s the ‘entertainment’. INXS did pretty well belting their three numbers out. The new-ish bloke out front does do a pretty fair job.

 

While the boys did their bit, a Sherrin-shaped hot air balloon (with the Sherrin stood on its point) sat uncomfortably at the centre circle, tied to — apparently — and surrounded by two brace of Toyota Hi-Lux crew cab 4x4. In the basket of said balloon, feverish hands continually activated the propane burner to maintain inflation — 90,000 cubic feet if our eyes didn’t deceive us. The wind desperately tried to bowl the balloon over, such that it appeared at times as though the balloon might self-imolate in some bizarre anti-Magpie protest.

 

A couple of over-eager tugs on the burner lever saw the basket bouncing once or twice in what turned out to be a rehearsal. Would they fly it out of the stadium? Now THAT would be entertainment (especially the bit dodging the cables for Channel 7’s mid-air camera!).

 

We wondered what would happen. After the ‘drama’ of the Tom Thumb cracker-powered cup descent of last year and the crazy dudes on top of vaulting poles the year before — not to mention the hallowed memory of Angry and the Batmobile — the waiting was . . . long!

 

At last, after braving the queue for the bar to rescue a plastic(!) cup of Draught from the mits and gut of some marauding Magpie supporter, we returned to our seat to see the balloon zooming upward to the full extent allowed by the tethers to the Hi-Lux armada.

 

Breathtaking stuff! Would the brakes on the Toyotas hold, or would there be a new worldwide recall on Monday? Would the balloon run out of gas, having already changed one gas cylinder over?

 

No, there was a very special treat in store. Tom Harley was announced walking onto the MGC’s sacred turf. Then, as the balloon pilot gave the burners an extra long spurt of gas, some dude in a red lycra jumpsuit appeared on the ledge of the balloon basket. Next thing we know, he hauls the Premiership Cup into view.

 

What will the dude do? Will he drop it to Tom? Will he lower it on a rope? Will he jump and hope the ’chute opens in 35 feet?

 

Nope. He threw a rope over the side and proceeded to abseil down the rope in an upside-down fashion, clutching the Cup in one hand. The symbolism of this left us speechless. All is forgiven Angry!! Come back, please??

 

Having resumed terra firma, the dude handed the Cup to Tom, who walked about twenty-five meters to hand it to Peter McKenna and Cowboy Neale. Obviously any remaining members of the 1958 Collingwood Premiership team couldn’t be broken out of their retirement homes and nursing homes, so “Pretty Boy” was chosen to do the honours in the event of a Magpie victory.

 

What in the name of all that is footy did all of this mean? Search us!

 

As ‘entertainment’, it was right up there with having finger nails pulled or sticking pins in your own eyes.

 

And while we’re having a grumpy rant, how is it that Stephen McBurney managed to spend more time on the field than on the bench? He was the emergency umpire! The only emergency was wondering if he’d run out of puff when we couldn’t see him! People used to give Darren Goldspink a tough time, suggesting he hogged the limelight! Bollocks! He was a rank amateur. McBurney is the Master.

 

What the hell! We can’t wait until next year week!

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Tuesday, September 21, 2010

What’s in a word?

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Regular visitors to AussieRulesBlog will not be shocked to read that we take words pretty seriously. Often there are a number of words that might suffice, but generally there’s only one that’s just right.

 

Tonight, Brownlow Night, we want to take issue with the use of the word win in relation to the Brownlow Medal. Chris Judd has not won his second medal. Rather, it was awarded to him by the umpires who, it is assumed, are are the least biased judges close to the action.

 

So words like received, or conferred or awarded are far more appropriate than win.

 

Why is it important? It’s to do with how the award was gained and whether the recipient had the award in mind during the contest. And we stress here that we are not supported by dictionary definitions.

 

So, for instance, a player who takes a contested mark wins the contest. The winning of many such contests, or at least many more than are lost or halved, may result in media judges conferring an award on the player, as it may also result in the match committee conferring the honour of the best and fairest award. Just as in the Brownlow scenario, these awards are incidental to the actions and attitudes for which they are awarded, and therefore are not won.

 

Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that favoured players are artificially placed into symbolic combative and adversarial roles such that they contest the Brownlow Medal with their peers. The mainstream mass media think they need such adversarial drama to create tension, gain an audience and, therefore, sell more advertising. This effect has been exacerbated with the increasing number of betting markets that are framed about institutions like the Brownlow.

 

It’s not a big issue, but it did get the bee buzzing in our bonnet tonight. And, Yes!, we certainly are a card-carrying pedant!

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Saturday, September 11, 2010

Loyalty reaps rewards

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One hopes the brains trust at the Brisbane Lions are pondering the possibility of having burned three fairly decent players for a sum result of smoke and mirrors.

 

Lachie Henderson looked increasingly like a ready-made replacement for an increasingly injury-prone Jonathan Brown as the season wore on, except that he now plays in the navy blue courtesy of the final Fevola deal.

 

As we noted at the time of Brisbane’s initial shopping of players to Carlton in a bid to secure the services of Fevola, Daniel Bradshaw had made clear his displeasure at this stunning display of disregard and it would only be a matter of time before Michael Rischitelli also moved on.

 

Importantly, the inevitable announcement was made before Brisbane’s best and fairest function this week, leaving Rischitelli smelling of roses, with his conscience clear, and Michael Voss reeking like an open sewer.

 

It’s worth noting that Geelong, a three-time Grand Finalist in three years, has managed to avoid off-loading players due to salary cap pressure. Brisbane, during its heyday between 2001 and 2003, similarly managed to keep an ultra-successful team together.

 

AussieRulesBlog has made no secret of our belief that the Bombers’ disposal of Hardwick, Caracella, Blumfield and Heffernan in the years immediately following that team’s best did more than anything else to drag the Bombers to their current lowly perch on the ladder.

 

Time will tell whether Brisbane can recover from their act of infamy, or whether, like the Bombers, they are destined for a long and slow decline.

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Monday, September 06, 2010

Only a technicality

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Our beloved game has been brought to a low point through inconsistency. The mild controversy raging over the closing stages of the Second Qualifying Final between St Kilda and Geelong has brought even more inconsistency to the game.

 

Many pundits have queried why the free kick was paid when Mooney fell into Gwilt’s back, the rationale being something along the lines of,

“…technically it was there, but there were others just like it that were missed…”

or

“…technically it was there, but let the game flow in those last few minutes…”.

 

So, now we ask the umpires to adjust how they umpire the game and apply different rules to certain parts of the game?

 

We at AussieRulesBlog find these to be completely fatuous arguments. The rules must be applied in exactly the same way, at every point during the game, in every game from the first practice game to the Grand Final! Consistency of application and interpretation is the single biggest gripe with the game. Yet, when there’s a sentimental moment, many of us are prepared to dismiss consistency on a whim.

 

If the free kick is technically there, then it’s a free kick, end of story. Coaches, players and fans have to be consistent too! The clamour should be to ask why it is not being paid in the same way more often!

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It’s official! MRP is a joke

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Today’s full report from the AFL’s Match Review Panel doesn’t include any mention of Jarrad Waite’s Academy Award-worthy performance at ANZ Stadium yesterday.

 

As jokes in sport go, the MRP now ranks right up there with Eddie the Eagle, Eric the Eel and scrums in the NRL.

 

The AFL’s much-vaunted sanctions against staging have been revealed, through the course of the season, to be an utter waste of time.

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Sunday, September 05, 2010

An opportunity to shine

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The Match Review Panel has an opportunity presented to it this week to shine. Carlton’s Jarrad Waite performed one of the more blatant examples of staging to be seen on an AFL field in 2010, dropping like a stone and holding his face after a Sydney opponent’s hand brushed him mid-chest.

 

If Waite is not cited, the AFL’s much-vaunted anti-staging sanctions will, once and for all, be seen to be nothing less than window dressing.

 

We wait with bated breath. . . .

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Three strikes policy fails human being

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It doesn’t take that mythical being, the rocket surgeon, to figure out that there are some problems with the AFL’s three-strikes drug policy in the wake of the Travis Tuck suspension.

 

The most alarming issue, at a club headed by the Chairman of the Beyond Blue initiative, is that Tuck did not feel sufficiently comfortable to discuss his depression with his coaches.

 

There’s no question that AFL is a brutal industry. In the last week alone, a senior coach was summarily dismissed and North Melbourne began delisting players. Whatever we might think about these events, or the awful commoditisation of human beings during trade week, it’s hard to see how these things can be less brutal to individuals within the wider context of the modern game.

 

For a fringe player, such as Tuck, it’s not hard to imagine the football club being a pretty lonely place. For any semi-established player not getting a regular senior game for that matter, the club must seem like a daunting and coldly-clinical place.

 

As fans, we often castigate players and coldly dismiss their efforts. On electronic boards, the fates of players are discussed as if they are pieces of furniture — and AussieRulesBlog is not without blame either.

 

It’s well past time everyone in the AFL industry remembered that we are dealing with human beings, not automatons. And Jeff Kennett, you should hang your head in shame that your club didn’t have the processes in place to identify Tuck’s depression before it got him to this point.

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Friday, August 20, 2010

Black and white media to blame

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Today’s breathless announcement that James Hird has ‘done a u-turn on coaching’ is disingenuous at best.

 

Hird had made a number of guarded responses to extraordinarily direct questioning over his coaching aspirations. At no stage did he announce he was available to coach Essendon in 2011, yet the lead of a Caroline Wilson piece in The Age this morning scurrilously suggests that was the case.

 

Hird had been asked, somewhat provocatively, to make specific comments about his coaching ambitions. As is common in these situations, his responses were general in nature and sought to give him some wriggle room without putting his hand up as a coaching aspirant in the immediate future.

 

The only place where there has been any misunderstanding has been in the fevered imaginations of ‘journalists’ like Ms Wilson.

 

Not for the first time, the media’s desire for controversy and a one-on-one ‘battle’ between two high-profile people has outweighed any adherence to journalistic principles.

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Thursday, August 19, 2010

Voracious media create the story

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Once again mainstream media have demonstrated their willingness to pursue a story until it fits their needs.  The hounding of James Hird with questions designed to force him into making a controversial statement, and therefore breathing new life into speculation over the future of Matthew Knights, has been scandalous.

 

Aussierulesblog has generally refrained from commenting on issues uniquely affecting the Bombers.  We prefer to think of ourselves as football fans first and foremost, with a strong affection for the Bombers.  However we find the controversy emerging over the last few days requires a note of sanity.

 

When Matthew Knights was appointed, we were mightily unimpressed.  Our assessment of his attributes as a player did not suggest he could be an outstanding coach.  His limited coaching resume did nothing to soothe our fears.  Time, however, has forced us to re-evaluate that assessment.

 

The last three or four years of the Sheedy ascendancy were pretty dismal times for Bombers fans who had become used to success and regular final series appearances.

 

Under Knights, the Bombers played a new and exciting brand of run and carry football.  When this gameplan worked, it was breathtakingly successful.  When it didn't, the team looked second rate.  Some famous successes, including consecutive victories against the hated Blues, seduced some supporters into believing that the team’s glory days had returned.

 

Toward the end of Sheedy’s time, the club had taken a fairly short term view in its recruiting decisions.  This policy doomed Knights to suffer the loss of much of the team’s experience and forced him, whether he wanted or not, into a rebuilding phase.

 

Statistics show that Knights’ record over his three years is superior to Sheedy’s over his last three years.

 

Nevertheless, the Sheedy supporters would not be swayed from the view that their icon had been unfairly removed and held Knights responsible.  There also emerged a rump of supporters attached to the myth that Essendon did not accept mediocre performances.  For this group, anything less than a resounding victory was unacceptable.  These two groups, both with unrealistic expectations, provided a veil of legitimacy for media speculation over Knights’ future.

 

Aussierulesblog wishes to go on record as a Knights supporter.  Without the benefit of hindsight, we considered that the Essendon board had got the timing and the decision on Sheedy right.  With hindsight, perhaps he was given a couple more years than were deserved.

 

The argument can easily be mounted that Knights has not been done any favours by circumstances over the past three years.  To mention just one, the loss of Gumbleton to debilitating injury for more than two years severely limited the development of a new forward line.

 

Convincing victories over acknowledged premiership contenders in both of the last two years suggest that Essendon and Knights have got it pretty right.

The assumption, implicit in the media's pursuit of Hird, that a gifted player will automatically be a successful coach at the elite level is not supported by history.  Of premiership coaches over the last 50 years, only Coleman, Blight, Jesaulenko and Roos would have been considered gifted as players.  So, a mere six of the last 49 premierships have been presided over by coaches who were gifted players.

 

Sentimentally, the notion that Hird could return and lead the club to a premiership is attractive.  Whether it is realistic and whether it justifies removing an incumbent whose record is not all that poor is quite another question. 

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Monday, August 16, 2010

Anyone notice a voice missing?

1 comment:

We just realised this morning that the football version of the human headline is no longer newsworthy! Aside from the right-wing rednecks listening to MTR, no-one has heard from Akermanis for a couple of weeks. Removing his listing with an AFL team removes his ability to generate controversy that will be reported in the mainstream media. A pity it took so long to happen.

 

Ed: Does Aker read AussieRulesBlog? Just when we mention the blessed silence, up he bobs with another ‘boot-in-mouth’ contender.

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Saturday, August 14, 2010

Gieschen a dim bulb

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Jeff Gieschen really is a dim bulb. Talk, rather than a better-positioned (additional) goal umpire will solve problems with incorrect goal umpire adjudications, according to Gieschen. This man’s grip on reality is tenuous at best.

 

The Giesch must go!

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Laws proposals highlight dangers of tinkering

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Does the very existence of Rules of the Game Committee almost require them to propose changes? There seem to be few, if any, compelling reasons for most of the changes proposed this week.

 

We suggested at the time of the Riewoldt and Kerr hamstrings that there would be an impetus for revision of interchange provisions in  the wake of those injuries. Prescient again!

 

Without access to data, it’s hard to comment on how current interchange rules may or may not contribute to injuries, although it is crystal clear that teams losing players, in the first half particularly, are significantly disadvantaged as a result.

 

Another consideration is the extent to which current interchange practices have advantaged some players. We wonder, for instance, whether Dane Swan would have risen to such prominence without constant interchange?

 

Our preference is for a cap that takes the game back a couple of years. Eighty seems to AussieRulesBlog to be a reasonable number. Then let coaches use them as they will. A cap reduces the impact of losing players substantially, while allowing coaches flexibility.

 

In terms of game length, there were changes to how time-on was applied in about 2006, when quarters were reduced from twenty-five minutes to twenty. Clearly the effect of the changes to time-on was too great. Why can we not just wind back that part of the 2006 change? Instead, the Committee proposes to play with the length of quarters again! This is, frankly, the most ill-considered of the proposals.

 

AussieRulesBlog has already identified a number of problems with advantage rule application. We can’t see how the inequities are undone by allowing players to initiate advantage. Players must still make an assumption about the foregoing free kick, leading, as sure as spring follows winter, to a spate of dodgy 50-metre penalties. Another nonsense proposal. the whole advantage situation needs to be rethought rather than tinkered with.

 

We are very unsure about empowering boundary umpires to pay free kicks. The game is inconsistent enough as it is with three separate interpretations on the field already: why would we add another four interpretations?

 

We are pretty comfortable with free kicking the player who drags the ball under an opponent in an attempt to get a free kick. Big tick for this one!

 

We are also quite comfortable with the onus of responsibility for high contact in shepherding to be with the shepherder. Another tick!

 

Frankly, the proposed changes to the scoring system seem to be a spoiler to take some heat off the more contentious of the other proposals. This one is complete and utter nonsense.

 

Finally, AussieRulesBlog asks why the committee did not seek to deal with the biggest single blight on the game at the present moment — the 50-metre penalty.

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Saturday, August 07, 2010

Zealots rule — again

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Watching last night’s Essendon-Carlton game on TV rather than live, courtesy of a broken arm sustained on Thursday, we were staggered at the degree of over-umpiring employed. True, the Giesch’s chief zealot, Steve McBurney was front and centre, but his colleagues on the night participated equally in the orgy of tiggy touchwood frees and overly-technical 50-metre penalties, to the detriment of the game.

 

Were these same umpiring attitudes to be displayed for the seven remaining games of the round, we would be less concerned, but we’d wager a considerable sum against that possibility. As for seeing them next week, well there’s more chance of a thylacine romping down Collins Street on Monday morning.

 

All that the game needs is consistency of approach and consistency of application. The only thing we get from The Giesch and his mob consistently is damnable inconsistency.

 

The Giesch must go!!!!

 

ps: Carlton were the better team on the night courtesy of better finishing. The umpiring, while deplorable, did not contribute materially to Essendon’s performance.

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Friday, July 30, 2010

Will a quick game of kick-to-kick suffice?

8 comments:

We have to wonder about the AFL. Not so long ago, they bent every effort to make the game faster and more continuous, most particularly with immediate kick-ins after behinds. Now, we’re told, the game is running too long.

 

Mark Stevens, in the Hun, even makes the extraordinary inference that fans might find a game of kick-to-kick fits into their schedules better — “… other sports are looking at shortened formats to keep fans interested, with cricket’s most popular form now Twenty20.” Seriously, is two and a half hours too long for the modern fan to concentrate?

 

“The real driver is the fans,” says Adrian Anderson. Well, Ando, old mate, what about undoing the immediate kick-in for  start? There’s a way to give players a rest during the game! Some of we fans could do with that rest too!

 

We’ve not finished groaning about the missed shot for goal when the ball is being rushed at breakneck speed through the opposition half-forward line, with our players haring back in desperate pursuit. We could do with a bit less of that.

 

But at a more basic level, Ando, it was the changes you blokes brought in that have created this hydra-headed monster. Rather than making more changes, have you considered winding a few of the recent changes back a bit?

 

And can we (not so) respectfully suggest to Ross Lyon that if he wants two 45-minute halves, he might be better suited to apply for Craig Bellamy’s job. Changing ends less frequently doesn’t bother the british bulldog blokes so much: if the ball’s in the air to be caught by a passing gale, it’s more likely been fumbled by someone than anything else.

 

You have to remember, Adrian, that footy is a little bit like climate change. You poke a bit more carbon dioxide into the air and it makes a subtle change that you don’t see for fifty years. In the meantime, you didn’t notice a change, so more carbon dioxide obviously wasn’t a problem. Then, by the time you realise carbon dioxide is a BIG problem, we’re all addicted to the stuff and we can’t turn the taps off. And the first lot of changes will now be affected even more by new sets of changes, and so on.

 

Every extra change we make to footy makes the game as a whole more like a chaotic weather system. No-one knows how the next lot of changes will turn out because the game is still digesting the changes for five to ten years ago.

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Monday, July 26, 2010

Umpires’ intuition or x-ray vision?

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We here at AussieRulesBlog have long held that umpires make some decisions based on guesswork. We had intuited this on the basis of a lifetime’s worth of football spectating.

 

Last Saturday evening, watching the last quarter of the North-Essendon game from an unaccustomed seven rows behind the fence, we saw Mark McVeigh fighting hard to gain possession of the ball and pulled to the ground with his back to the umpire. We know this because we were right on the umpire’s line of sight, so we were seeing pretty much exactly what the umpire was seeing.

 

We couldn’t see the ball. We didn’t know whether McVeigh still had the ball or whether a North opponent had taken it from him as they were surrounded by as many as fifteen players and buried under another four or five, with McVeigh still lying on the ground with his back to the umpire.

 

So the picture here is a confused tangle of bodies where we cannot be sure of the location — or possession — of the ball.

 

You know already, dear Reader, what happened next, don’t you? The umpire slowly brought the whistle to his mouth, blew a long blast and then made that awful sweeping gesture to indicate a free kick against McVeigh for not having disposed of the ball correctly.

 

So, the umpire either guessed, or is possessed of x-ray vision.

 

Either way, it’s not appropriate to make decisions on that basis.

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Saturday, July 24, 2010

(mis)Interpretation rules

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Fresh from our mid-season R&R, AussieRulesBlog watched the Saints-Hawks game on television with renewed interest. The mixed blessing of access to the umpires’ audio feed provoked a number of questions.

 

Time to kick

Not for the first time, we noticed that a defender gets barely five seconds to compose himself and plan his kick before an officious voice (imagination required for Steve McBurney here) solemnly intones, “Move it along; play on!” and the umpire does a comical impression of an albatross taking off.

 

As the ball moves further toward the attacking goal, players seem to get more and more time.

 

Once there is a shot for goal involved, in contrast, the time allowed magically expands to twenty seconds before the player is called to start moving.

 

No doubt The Mikado (Jeff Gieschen, for those who haven’t followed the Gilbert and Sullivan association threads) will remind us that goals are important in the game and that players should have a reasonable chance to maximise the effectiveness of their kicks. Nor argument from us there, except that it’s reasonable to apply the same rule across the whole field.

 

Natural arc’ and moving off the line

An umpire in the aforementioned Saints-Hawks game penalised Leigh Montagna for taking a step toward Franklin who had run substantially off his line in taking a kick. The umpire did not call “play on!”, so we have no difficulty with the decision.

 

What did puzzle us though, was the explanation offered to Montagna by the umpire — that Franklin’s “natural arc” saved him from a play on call. Now, we wonder how much natural arc is allowed. If the Grand Final final siren has sounded and the Hawks are down five points with Franklin taking a kick from the right-hand behind post (that is, the behind post is on Franklin’s right side), how much natural arc will be allowed before “Play on!” is called and the match finishes before the kick is taken?

 

Once again, by way of contrast, some defenders seem to do little more than raise an eyebrow before being called to play on.

 

Five-metre zone

We also noticed that Hawthorn have modified the Collingwood tactic of blocking the man on the mark to facilitate a play on move. The Hawks’ method involves stationing someone fairly close to the mark who can quickly come in and block as soon as “Play on!” is called. Invariably, in our observation, the blocking player is within five metres of the player on the mark. When 50-metre penalties are being almost routinely awarded for players infringing the five-metre protected zone, it seems the umpires aren’t a wake-up to this variation on tactics.

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Armband aboutface?

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After a week of mid-season R&R enjoying the sun in Merimbula — and missing the Akermanis sacking media blitz — AussieRulesBlog sat down to watch the St Kilda-Hawthorn game.

 

What a cracker of a game, with the draw being a fitting result that reduced the over-zealous umpiring effect to minimal.

 

Of greater interest were the armbands worn by each club. We’ve searched high and low this morning, but we can’t find any AFL statement changing their “black armband only” policy, laid down when Essendon first proposed the Call to Arms game to support cancer research and asked permission for both clubs to wear yellow armbands. Not possible said the AFL at the time; allow yellow and there’d be a flood of applications for armbands of many and varied hues.

 

The Saints and the Hawks playing for the Tynan-Eyre Cup each year is a fitting way to remind the community of the danger that our Police face on a daily basis, but the Police check armband isn’t black.

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Sunday, July 18, 2010

Bowen absence raises questions

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As best AussieRulesBlog can ascertain, Corey Bowen, the first-time AFL umpire at the centre of the controversy over five first-half 50-metre penalties resulting in goals to Melbourne in Round 15, did not get an AFL game in round 16.

This despite AFL umpiring boss Jeff Gieschen's assurances, on Monday night on One Week at a Time on OneHD, that all these decisions were correct.

It's not too big a stretch of the imagination to suspect that Bowen has been sent back to lower grades, but is it a punishment?

Were Gieschen's assurances worth the air expelled in uttering them, surely Bowen would have been assigned to another game, if nothing else, to dissuade those of us who might assume otherwise.

We also note that most of the decisions paid by Bowen in round 15 have not been copied by umpires in round 16. Funny that, but of course, according to Gieschen, there can be no question of the umpires deviating from the DVD interpretations distributed at the commencement of the season.

More utter nonsense from the AFL's king of spin! Gieschen must go!
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Monday, July 12, 2010

Gieschen fantasy

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We’re watching Jeff Gieschen on One Week at a Time on OneHD.

 

We don’t have a special focus from one week to another, says Gieschen. All we’re doing is umpiring to the DVD issued at the start of the season, says Gieschen.

 

Jeff, go down to the back corner of your garden, take a picture of the fairies and email it back to us!

 

Wanker!

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The other man’s grass. . .

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Can it be that Ross Lyon is complaining that returning star Nick Riewoldt received too much physical attention from opponents?

 

What????

 

Is this the same Ross Lyon who coaches St Kilda, the team that serial pest and convicted star terroriser Steven Baker plays for?

 

We know that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, but this is bordering on the absurd.

 

It was only two weeks ago that Baker was assaulting Steve Johnson. Would Lyon have us believe that Baker took it upon himself to badger Johnson in that way? Does he seriously imagine that we could think those actions weren’t at least tacitly approved by himself?

 

Pull the other one, Ross, it plays Jingle Bells!

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“Fifty” must go!

3 comments:

Five first-half 50-metre penalty goals to the Demons in their game against Essendon — all of them technically “there” perhaps, all of them severe and over-zealous interpretations on even the most charitable assessment and counter to the generally prevailing interpretations for the rest of the season and, without having the benefit of checking the replay yet, all of them the work of one umpire it seemed — accounted for the Demons lead at half time.

 

It matters not that the Demons looked the better team and deserved to win. If it were not already obvious, the application and severity of the 50-metre penalty must be reassessed.

 

As best AussieRulesBlog can determine, the umpire involved, Corey Bowen, was umpiring his first AFL game. Despite our deep frustration, we understand that nervousness on the big stage for the first time could lead to over-zealous officiating. Hopefully, he will learn from the experience, but the AFL must also learn the lesson that a blanket reliance on 50-metre penalties is damaging the game.

 

AussieRulesBlog is happy to concede that 50 metres is appropriate for deliberate and clearly-obvious time-wasting or for deliberate violence.

 

Interchange infringements seem to us to be pretty minor in the spectrum of offences. If a team has an extra player on the field due to sloppy interchanging and either that player is involved in the play or is on the field for more than, say, five seconds, we’re happy with a 50-metre penalty. If those conditions are not met, forget it.

 

Offences at the mark should be dependant on whether the umpire has set the mark. If a player runs over the mark immediately subsequent to a legitimate attempt to spoil, carried there by his momentum, providing he immediately attempts to take up a more realistic mark and moves backward to assume a more realistic position, no penalty should be applied. An umpire could adjust that positioning without penalty, provided reasonable instructions were obeyed.

 

We are all for penalising players who intentionally drag down a player who has marked, if the tackling player was not in the marking contest. This does constitute time wasting and the 50-metre penalty is appropriate.

 

If, however, the players are involved in a contest for the mark, that is, they are touching or almost touching each other, regardless of whether the defending player actually makes contact with the ball, the tackling/defending player is not wasting time, but competing for the ball. Applying a 50-metre penalty in these circumstances reduces Aussie rules to a game of netball.

 

As custodians of the game, it is incumbent on the AFL to introduce a lesser penalty — perhaps 25 metres — for some lesser-severity offences. The lesser penalty may also reduce the impact of incorrect decisions.

 

We would also hope that umpires beginning their senior AFL careers might be past nervousness.

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Friday, July 09, 2010

Execution ends torture by a thousand cuts

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It’s hard to figure out what medium-term benefits Port Adelaide gain from sacking their senior coach after fifteen rounds.

 

Short term, the players are likely to play out of their skins against an in-form Collingwood tonight. Mick Malthouse cannot be pleased to hear of his fellow coach’s demise.

 

Longer term, Port have plenty of time to identify available coaching talent and scoop the cream before others have a chance.

 

In the medium term, whoever takes over as caretaker has little option but to continue with the Williams gameplan. It’s too late in the season to contemplate significant restructure.

 

From half a country away, it seems to have been a media-driven frenzy of speculation for the last eighteen months over Williams’ future, relations with CEO and Board, relations with players, relations with assistant coaches, and relations with whoever could be used to create the impression of discord.

 

It may be that there is and was genuine discord between Williams and one or many of the aforementioned groups, but there’s little doubt that the media in general have blood on their hands tonight.

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Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Umpires: survey of perceptions

5 comments:

Rob Gill, of Swinburne Uni, has posted a link to a survey he’s running of perceptions of umpires. here’s the post:

Greetings footy fans
I am researching the AFL umpires and our perceptions of their performance.
Would very much appreciate you taking a few minutes to complete this voluntary survey (link below). Rest assured your answers will remain completely anonymous.
http://opinio.online.swin.edu.au/s?s=AFL_Umpires_2010
Please feel free to pass it on to any friends and associates who might like to have their say!
Thanks
Rob Gill
Swinburne University of Technology

AussieRulesBlog has already responded to the survey. We indicated, as best we were able given the questions asked, that ‘problems’ with umpiring, at least at the AFL level, are more to do with direction from the AFL umpiring department and much less to do with individual umpires’ performance. We even included our daily prayer: Release The Giesch!!!! Feel free to pass my response on to The Giesch, Rob!

 

Anyway, if you’re reading this, be a good little Vegemite and give Rob some data for his research.

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Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Homegrown a surer bet?

1 comment:

There has been much made of the performance of young Irishman Michael Quinn in the Bombers’ 84-point drubbing at the hands of the Crows. Quinn had eight possessions, but, with clangers and frees against, finished the night on zero Supercoach points.

 

AussieRulesBlog admires the young bloke’s gumption to up sticks and travel halfway round the world to have a crack at a foreign football code.

 

Quinn is one of the results of either:

  1. a myth that the Draft is the only source of potentially capable players; or
  2. a belief that the next Jim Stynes is lurking somewhere in a young Irish body.

We don’t have any stats to back it up, but our impression is that the ranks of Irish VFL/AFL stars are pretty thin. The aforementioned Stynes, Tadgh Kennelly, Marty Clarke and Sean Wight would be about it. Setanta O’hAilpin tries hard but still looks like a fish out of water. Stynes’ brother, Brian, managed a few games, but didn’t have his brother’s touch in the foreign code and another O’hAilpin had a try, without success.

 

It’s hardly a Hall of Fame roll call, yet clubs and recruiters have kept going back to kiss the Blarney Stone and light the fire of hope in young Irish hearts.

 

The lot of local kids who enter the Draft, but aren’t picked, has been pretty dim. At 17 or 18, a bunch of recruiters pass a judgement on your worth and your papers are stamped. For many, that stamp is NOT UP TO AFL STANDARD.

 

Thankfully, once almost by accident and once with a pleasing degree of persistence from the player and prescience from the recruiter, in 2010 we’ve seen an inkling that so-called mature-age recruits — Michael Barlow is an ancient 22 years! — still have something to offer.

 

The Podsiadly story is by now so well known that we need not repeat any of it. Suffice to say that Geelong’s lucky rabbit’s foot was involved in them recruiting the 28-year-old as an ancillary whilst he played for the Cats’ VFL team. The 2010 story is of an emerging key forward averaging something approaching four goals per game — admittedly with the competition’s premier midfield delivering the ball to advantage more times than not.

 

Poor ‘old’ Michael Barlow must have thought himself destined for the dimmer lights and lighter pay packets of the VFL, SANFL and WAFL, if he was lucky. Fremantle’s gamble has paid off handsomely with Barlow getting plenty of attention in Brownlow Medal betting markets. His broken leg is a setback, but we should all hope he recovers like Michael Voss rather than like Nathan Brown.

 

It’s so obvious that it hardly needs pointing out, but, unlike Quinn and O’hAilpin, Podsiadly and Barlow already knew how to play Aussie rules. How much coaching time spent on Quinn and O’hAilpin could have been better spent honing the skills of a Barlow or a Podsiadly.

 

More recently, the high-profile signings of Karmichael Hunt and Israel “The Promised Land” Folau risk the same outcomes as Quinn and O’hAilpin. Of course, in the push into hostile NRL territory, Hunt and Folau offer a publicity edge that is attractive, but their playing worth is yet to be tested. One wonders what Hunt is thinking after his first couple of outings for Gold Coast.

 

We hope that AFL clubs and recruiters learn the lesson: there are plenty of local kids who were too small, too slow or too immature. They can now make a substantial and relatively quick transition to effective players, rather than the four or six-year lead times for an international hopeful.

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2010 as we saw it

January
Who can forget the fallout from the Blues’ players pre-Christmes ‘booze cruise’? Club culture was our constant companion through a very quiet month.

Reports of AFLPA draftee induction camps gave us hope that, eventually, we shouldn’t have to endure the infantile antics of AFL footballers.

Later in the year, 18-year NFL veteran, Brett Favre, demonstrated this is a forelorn hope with his ‘sexting’.

February
As we prepared to get into the semi-serious stuff of the pre-season competition, the AFL gave bloggers a late Christmas present by revealing its so-called staging sanctions. Confusion reigned with almost everybody expecting players staging for a free kick in a marking contest to be free kicked or reported. Hardly anyone took the trouble to watch the video and understand what the AFL actually intended.

Temporary Saints recruit, Andrew Lovett, who already hadn’t managed to hit it off with his new teammates, found himself facing a rape charge and his new club finding him guilty without the benefit of a trial.

As the pre-season comp got underway, there was plenty of controversy with an apparent video referral of a scoring decision resulting in the goal umpire’s call being overturned. Field umpires had got straight back into stride by paying free kicks based on what they thought had happened rather than what they’d seen and, following the lead of Stephen McBurney, keeping their whistles on a hair trigger.

March
As the FFA seduced some sections of the AFL world with deals to upgrade regional stadiums, the Saints descended into amateur hour with the most inept handling of a grievance against a player in AFL history.

The AFL umpiring department announced their somewhat hilarious sponsorship by spectacle retailers, OPSM, and then proceeded to umpire sensibly — to everyone’s surprise!

Finally, the season proper got underway and we had a bit of a rant about how media select BOGs.

April
The AFL’s long-standing desire to make the game more attractive was thrown into chaos by the proliferation of ugly milling packs where everyone was frightened to take possession of the ball.

We lauded Western Bullgog, Bob Murphy, and his old-fashioned notion of respect for opponents and the Magpies–Saints clash provided a gilt-edged example of disrespect. Not only that, but three other posts focussed on this game. In the meantime, Brendan Fevola managed to tick off another couple of deadly sins on his personal bucket list.

We penned another instalment in our campaign to remove The Giesch, this time for inflexible interpretations.

Melbourne Storm managed to outmuscle every other sport in the world for press column-centimetres for a few days.

May
The month began with us berating Jeff Gieschen. That was a surprise — not.

Some genius at the AFL decided the Demons and the umpires would look spectacular in (nearly) matching uniforms for the Breast cancer game. Demons players couldn’t find their teammates on the field and kept handballing to umpires.

Speculation bubbled along concerning the next big NRL convert to AFL (and will Greg Inglis now make it another?), Jeff Kennett inserted his foot firmly in his mouth over the Ben Cousins doco, followed in close order by senior coach Alastair Clarkson shooting his gob off.

The rushed behind rule became interesting with about sixty thousand definitions being flung around, none of them being one of several employed by the AFL umpires. We finished the month by writing off St Kilda, in the wake of Riewoldt’s hamstring and lamenting the demise of respect and sportsmanship on the AFL field.

June
The holding the ball rule, 50-metre penalties, the advantage rule interpretation, and Jeff Gieschen, occupied much of our attention in June, along with Stephen Baker’s mauling of Steve Johnson and chief umpiring zealot, Steve McBurney’s hair-trigger whistle.

July
Co-operative goal umpiring that still couldn’t get the decision right was in our sights as July began. But we managed to focus on non-umpiring topics as well!

Modern players’ penchant for dribbling the ball through for a goal caught our attention and indicated to us that these players are just show ponies.

Confusing and inconsistent Match Review Panel outcomes gave us some grief, while the emergence of Michael Barlow as a star for Fremantle suggested to us that home-grown, ‘mature’-age recruits would be a better bet than international fancies like the Bombers’ Irishman, Michael Quinn.

Mark Williams’ sacking by Port Adelaide brought to an end to his death of a thousand cuts, while debut umpire Corey Bowen’s five first-half 50-metre penalties against the Bombers had us almost apoplectic with rage. We didn’t have long to wait for retribution as Bowen didn’t feature in the list of umpires for matches played the following week!

Meanwhile, Jeff Gieschen fantasised that his charges umpired “to the DVD” each and every week! Yeah, sure Jeff, and we’re a dead ringer for George Clooney.

The AFL allowed a police-check armband for the Hawks and Saints, but no such leniency for the Bombers and their Clash for Cancer.

Einsteinian concepts of curved space were employed to justify Lance Franklin’s ‘natural arc’ when kicking for goal, to allow umpires not to call play on. Truly one of the more breathtaking rationalisations from Gieschen’s mob for the year.

August
Surprise, surprise, Steve McBurney and over-zealous umpiring caught our attention at the start of the month, but not quite as much as the huge cast we found encasing our left wrist and forearm, courtesy of a fall. A nicely snapped radius bone in what the medical fraternity know as a Colles fracture.

Jeff Gieschen, ignoring previous indiscretions by his charges in making scoring decisions, suggested talk and consultation would be more effective in weeding errors out of goal umpiring than an extra goal umpire at each end. We must conclude that goal umpires are extraordinarily well-paid, since the AFL seem incredibly reluctant to employ another eight of them!

Finally, the talk began that James Hird would replace Matthew Knights as Essendon coach. As we now know, Knights was gone by the end of the month and Hird was being very coy. Smoke? Fire? We remain unconvinced by the denials of preplanning.

September
We highlighted the MRP’s failure to act against blatant staging when Jarrad Waite lodged an Oscar-worthy entry against the Swans, while the AFL world debated the merits of free kicks that are “technically there, but . . .”

An exodus of almost biblical proportions at Brisbane in the previous summer and the failure of the big name import to have a meaningful impact on-field left the club looking rather sickly.

And then there was the Grand Final entertainment — a highlight of our year. This year’s baffling progress of the Premiership Cup from a tethered hot air balloon, through the hands of Tom Harley, to Peter McKenna and ‘Cowboy’ Neale was underwhelming in the extreme.

Fortunately, as we now know, the game itself lived up to all the hype and more. The Saints were a bee’s dick away from breaking their drought, needing only a mildly eccentric bounce of the ball for Steven Milne to goal in the dying seconds and secure the game. Instead the ball bounced at 120° and we were back the following week.

In a fitting finish to the on-field year, in the drawn Grand Final, emergency umpire Steve McBurney spent more time on the field than most of the players.

Oh, and, quite unexpectedly, James Hird was appointed coach of the Bombers, in case you missed that news!

October
Of course, the Grand Final replay imposed footy on October even more strongly than usual, with the ’Woods downing the Saints in no uncertain terms — sadly. AussieRulesBlog has no great affection for the Saints, but any day that Collingwood loses is a good day.

In the biggest jaw-dropping moment of the year, Saints coaches nominated perennial ‘rabbit-in-the-headlights’ Zac Dawson as their best player in the grand final replay.

Bomber Thompson left the Cats, taking the media world completely by surprise, and the impact of expansion teams on the Gold Coast and in Sydney meant we’d have a six-ring circus for the first round of the pre-season competition.

November
Once again taking everyone by surprise, Bomber Thompson was announced as senior assistant to James Hird at Essendon.

A trickle of assistant coaches leaving St Kilda became a flood, leaving coach Ross Lyon to book a telephone booth for the footy department’s Xmas party.

December
The FFA’s soap bubble of optimism for hosting the World Cup was unceremoniously burst, leaving Frank Lowy and Ben Buckley wearing egg makeup.

The Demons released their ‘cutting-edge’ new uniform, to a general yawn, Gary Ablett Jnr let it be known that Bomber Thompson’s problem was that he was trying to coach the football team and, just for good measure, the AFL announced another slew of temporary rule changes for the pre-season competition — some OK, some laughable.

And that’s how it was at AussieRulesBlog for 2010. We look forward to having our regular readers back for 2011 when, once again, we’ll prick a few balloons and renew our campaign to Release the Giesch!

Happy New Year and have a safe, enjoyable and productive 2011. Go Bombers!

A tangled web?

Without having seen the much-publicised photographs of Nick Riewoldt ‘un-clothed’, as it were, we can’t make any specific comment. But the Taiwanese animation was pretty funny.

Regular readers will, we hope, forgive us for being to the point, so to speak, on this issue.

If, as claimed by Riewoldt, these pictures were taken by Sam Gilbert, what were they still doing on his computer? And how did a 17-year-old know the files were there, and then get sufficient access to his computer to be able to copy the files.

There’s clearly more to this than meets the eye — perhaps unless you’ve seen the pictures. . .

Oh, what a tangled web, Nick.

Not Really Likely (NRL), Greg

It’s probably fair to say that Greg Inglis’ management haven’t been fielding recruiting calls from Mensa since the Storm’s salary cap shenanigans were revealed.

 

After a handshake agreement with the Broncos, Inglis decides the Rabbitohs are a better deal and loads up on sponsorship contracts. Unexpectedly, and to its great credit, the NRL didn’t roll over and allow Russel Crowe to tickle their tummy.

 

Now, having poisoned his chalice at Brisbane, and without too many other likely options, Inglis is reportedly speaking with Essendon about a possible move to AFL.

 

(Scene from ‘Lost in Space’): Robot appears stage left. “Danger, James Hird! Danger!”

 

We love our Bombers at AussieRulesBlog and we dutifully appeared at Windy Hill this morning along with many others of the faithful to cast an appreciative eye over the Hird-led Bombers for the first time. We faithfully recorded our membership video slot that “We are One”, as it were.

 

Unlike Karmichael Hunt and Israel Folau, Inglis is considering AFL as something of a last resort. He doesn’t want to be at Essendon (or any other AFL club). Regardless of whatever professionalism he exhibits, and despite his obvious rugby league-based athletic prowess, it’s hard to imagine he can give the 150% commitment required to make the shift.

 

Please, James. Please, David and Ian. We don’t need this distraction and we don’t need a champion try scorer!

Season’s Greetings

And so this is Christmas, and what have you done,

Another year over, and a new one just begun

Just after the thirtieth anniversary of the senseless death of the incomparable John Lennon, it seems somehow appropriate to open this post with those words.

 

This period leading up to Christmas is truly the ‘graveyard shift’ for those of us commenting on AFL football. All teams are flooding their members and potential members with not-quite-specific expectations of bumper years, bumper recruits and the sweet, sweet scent of on-field success.

 

At the end of this, our third year of AussieRulesBlog, we’ve recorded our highest total of posts. We’ve remained true to our pledge to ourselves not to attempt to indulge in weekly reviews and end up posting weakly reviews as some sites do. We’ve also resisted the urge to view ourselves as newsbreakers or even early commenters on breaking news.

 

AussieRulesBlog is very much about, we hope, well-considered positions on important issues in the game. It would be easy to make rash and ill-considered statements to drive traffic to our internet door. Frankly, we love the game far too much to consider allowing it to be a vehicle for self-aggrandisement.

 

So, to those who read this post, thank you for taking the time to do so. If you are a regular visitor, again thank you. We wish all of you, regular or not, the very best for the festive season. Celebrate in moderation and take a few moments to consider those less well-off than yourself.

They just can’t leave it alone

The AFL’s announcement of temporary rule changes for the pre-season competition in 2011 further reinforces the notion that, given a toy to play with, the boys just can’t resist fiddling with it until it’s broken!

 

One of the temporary rules, a free kick against the last player to touch the ball before it goes out of bounds, was introduced, according to Adrian Anderson (reported in The Age) “to provide another point of difference”. This is the same thinking that is ruining cricket with wall-to-wall Twenty-20 ‘hit-and-giggle’ matches. Given the average attendances at domestic Sheffield Shield and one-day matches, perhaps cricket administrators could be allowed some leniency, but no such situation confronts AFL football. We need ‘Twenty-20’ football like we need a collective hole in the head. JUST STOP FIDDLING WITH IT!

 

Of the other rules, the one of most concern is video replays for goal umpiring decisions. Firstly, again according to Anderson (in The Age), in 2010 there were fewer than ten (10) errors in ten thousand scoring decisions. That’s an error rate of less than one tenth of one percent! Hardly a compelling rationale.

 

Secondly, the rule as announced is inherently inequitable. In the age of immediate kick-out following a behind, there cannot be any review of an incorrect ‘behind’ decision. Only a ‘goal’ decision will provide sufficient time for a video review to be performed. This is ill-considered at best.

 

AussieRulesBlog wholeheartedly agrees with free-kicking players who drag the ball in under another player in an effort to win a free kick. We think it’s fair enough to give a player awarded a 50-metre penalty outside the 50-metre arc a choice of the penalty and six-point goal or no penalty and the chance at a nine-point goal.

 

But we have plenty of reservations about boundary umpires paying free kicks at stoppages. There are already too many interpretations of contentious rules on the ground with three field umpires. A further four different interpretations is just going to make a mockery of the rule book.

Wagging the Cat

Regular readers will know that AussieRulesBlog hasn’t been totally convinced that the smoke around the appointments of James Hird and Mark Thompson at Essendon doesn’t obscure a little spark or two.

Of course, Thompson’s situation walking away from a contract to coach Geelong and his fairly public falling out with his star player, Gary Ablett Jnr, mean that there’s a lot more media miles to be wrung out yet.

Nevertheless, we wondered about this quote from young ‘Gazza’:

"Rather than just trying to be a coach, he [Thompson] was a very controlling person, trying to run the medical department, the contract negotiations, and if it wasn't his way, it was nobody's way."

We know we don’t always have the right end of the stick here at AussieRulesBlog Central, but we’ve been pretty much of the opinion that if the club is playing crap footy, it’s the senior coach’s neck which is on the chopping block.

Why then would the senior coach not want to have the medical department running in sync with his own ideas?

And surely, even at the “Do we want this bloke or not?” level, the coach has to have some say in contracts.

We can only hope that Bluey McKenna remembers to check with Gazza before he announces any decisions.

Rookie rewards

Back in November, we lamented what looked like the end of Robert Eddy’s AFL career. Thus, it was pleasing to note that the Saints had selected him in the Rookie draft, but there’s a catch.

As we were feeling pleased for Eddy, we recalled a story in the Hun a few days ago focussing on delisted Dons rookie, Marcus Marigliani.

Prior to being drafted, Marigliani says he was earning around $900k as a carpenter, plus another $30k or so playing footy. As a rookie with the Dons in 2010, effectively a full-time job, he cleared just $27,000.

So, while we celebrate Robert Eddy getting another chance, he’s going to have moths coming out of his wallet in 2011, going from being a contracted player to a rookie. Not much of a reward for having been good enough to be picked in a Grand Final team in consecutive weeks.

In another story, newly-returned assistant coach, club great Robert Harvey, mentions in passing that coach Ross Lyon has told Eddy he has a few things to work on — after being good enough to be chosen in a Grand final team in consecutive weeks. We reckon Lyon might have a few things to work on too just quietly.

We know that not everyone in a Grand Final team is a champion. There have to be ‘indians’ as well as ‘chiefs’ in every team. Nevertheless, we can’t help wondering, again, how Eddy will feel when he comes across ex-Richmond fringe player Dean Polo, who we reckon will be pocketing a decent bit more than $27k after being picked up in the national draft after Eddy had been delisted.

If it were us in Eddy’s spot, we reckon we’d put a good dose of extra venom into competitive work when we spied Polo on the other side of the contest.

Dees in a spin

It’s not only politicians that indulge in spin. The Melbourne Football Club is spinning so furiously that they’ll be suffering from vertigo for the next ten years.

The Demons have unveiled a ‘cutting edge’ new guernsey (although the Herald-Sun bogans refer to it as a ‘jumper’).Club great David Neitz, never the most assured of media performers, has been corralled into doing a piece to camera and some voiceovers in a web presentation provided to members.

Neitz explains that the new guernsey design features a high collar as a reminder of past champions.  . . .  . . . WTF? Tom Scully is going to play like Ron Barassi because his guernsey now sports a dinky little Mandarin collar? Oh, for goodness sakes.

Darker shades of red and blue also, apparently, evoke memories of the club’s “true” heritage. In the last forty years there can be hardly any hues of red and blue that have not graced the Demons’ playing uniform at some point.

The red yoke now has a deeper V which is “more demonic” apparently, and [spin, spin, spin, spin, spin].

There’s no doubt this stuff goes down well with members.

AussieRulesBlog recently received a link to the Bombers’ “I’m One!” membership advertisement and we confidently expect to feature in it in the not too distant future. No doubt supporters of other clubs will see it as arrogant, crass, and so on. That’s understandable.

We recall a Melbourne Football Club CD released many years ago. The silky-voiced Christine Sullivan sang the club theme song in an extremely slow tempo as a background to all living MFC players (I think) reciting their name and games total. This section of the CD was played on radio at the time and we freely admit to a couple of crocodile tears while listening to it. VERY emotional stuff.

And that’s where the unveiling of the new Demons uniform plunges into spin, because it desperately tries to pull on emotional heartstrings, but it’s only about what the current lot will be wearing. It’s not about doing.

FFA soap bubble of optimism burst

We at AussieRulesBlog Central feel some sympathy for those who allowed themselves to be seduced by Frank Lowy’s boundless optimism that Australia could somehow secure the hosting rights for the World Cup.

 

In the cold, hard light of a Zurich day, the FFA bid had a snowball’s chance in hell, and that’s the way the votes fell.

 

Lowy and Ben Buckley must have known from the start they they were pushing a blanc mange up a cliff with a stick. Still, if they wanted to delude themselves and those world game aficionados who couldn’t see reason for romance, that’s fine.

 

What we object to was the $45 million of public money that was tipped into this farcical circus, not to mention the AFL being hounded into spending time negotiating a stadium availability solution for an event that had less chance of coming off than we have of being discovered as the long-lost scion of some mega-wealthy family.

 

At the end, there’s always the slim possibility of oil revenues drying up before 2020, leaving the Qataris unable to fulfil their obligations. Now THAT would be a delicious irony.

New ‘clash’ strip for ‘Barcodes’

A very tight election result in Victoria has overshadowed the announcement that Collingwood — from this point on to be known as the Barcodes here at AussieRulesBlogwill wear a clash strip against North Melbourne.

Although AussieRulesBlog cannot see the ‘clash’ with North Melbourne’s vertical royal blue stripes, the Kangaroos have recently been forced into impersonating Argentina’s Pumas when playing Collingwood — even for their own ‘home’ games!

Collingwood's 2010 strips (home, away and clash)

North's 2010 strips (home, away and clash)


For 2011, the AFL have announced Collingwood will wear a newly-designed clash guernsey when playing North Melbourne. We are at a loss to see how this new alternative makes any material difference, especially since we didn’t consider there was a practical problem in the first place.

 Collingwood's 2011 'clash' strip — to be used against North

Perhaps the Barcodes could be forced to play in a washed out grey-striped guernsey when fronting the Kangaroos?



We acknowledge that our own beloved Bombers have similarly resisted AFL pressure to design a radically-different clash strip.

Further on clash strips, we consider the average response — design an essentially all-white uniform with a small splash of traditional colours — to psychologically emasculate the team so uniformed. Sure, there are wins in these all-but-all-white clash strips, but even the brawniest players look rather less fearsome and significantly more insipid in these white uniforms. Clubs should leave ‘whites’ where they belong — on the cricket field!

Media hyperbole over video ‘leak’

Handwringing over the apparently hacked release of an Essendon web video of recruiting manager Adrian Dodoro extolling the virtues of Shaun Atley simply doesn’t pass the logic test.

 

It’s pretty obvious that the Bombers thought the best player they could expect to be available at pick 8 was Atley. When Dyson Heppell hadn’t been called to that point, they decided to reassess.

 

Hence the expected drafting of Atley was replaced by the unexpected drafting of Heppell. Not too hard to figure out, we think. And hardly an embarrassment for the club. More mainstream media hyperbole.

Oh, so close

We got to thinking after putting together our previous post. Those now–ex-AFL players would have had a tough day following the draft yesterday, but perhaps none tougher than Robert Eddy.

 

Eddy has come within two of the proverbial bees’ dicks of virtual football immortality. Instead, he’s probably destined to be a footnote.

 

Readers will recall that Eddy was considered unlucky not to have made the Saints’ 2009 Grand Final team. He followed that up by playing in both the 2010 Grand Finals.

 

But for an unlucky bounce of the ball at the end of the drawn 2010 Grand Final, Eddy would be the proud owner of a Premiership player’s medal. With a little luck in selection the year before, he could have been a Matthew Scarlett toe-poke away from another Premiership medal.

 

And now, aged only 22, it appears his AFL career is over.

 

If anyone tries to tell you that AFL is not a tough game, remind them how a young bloke who’s done everything right to get himself into the team for the biggest game of the year has been ground up and spat out.

 

What may stick in Eddy’s craw will be the Saints’ final two draft selections after he has been cast adrift: ex-Cat Ryan Gamble and ex-Tiger Dean Polo. It’s fanciful, in our view, to consider that Polo could be picked in a team for a Grand Final and Gamble had certainly not secured a regular spot in the Cats’ lineup. We wonder whether the Polo recruitment will rival that previous ex-Tiger Saint, Aaron Fiora’s ‘success’.

 

These are curious decisions and, along with the recent exodus of coaching staff, must place some sort of question mark over coach Ross Lyon’s future.

 

And in a late announcement, West Coast have delisted Ashley Hansen. Interesting timing, coming the day after the draft. We’re not that confident that Hansen would have been selected by anyone, but the bloke is surely entitled to have a chance to throw his hat into the ring. We understand there’s little place for sentiment in the modern game, but we think West Coast have treated Hansen particularly poorly in this.

What the ?

The draft may well have been ‘compromised’ by the Suns’ plethora of early picks — we’re not entirely convinced on that score — but we can’t help feeling there are some other issues.

 

From The Age’s report of the draft:

 

Luke Mitchell: “Missed much of the year with a shoulder injury. . .”

 

Wayne Hughes, Carlton’s recruiting manager: “Luke Mitchell is a centre half-forward who missed most of the season with a knee reconstruction.”

 

Some anatomy classes are in order for either Wayne or The Age’s reporter!

 

Adrian Dodoro (Essendon’s recruiting manager): “It was a year where we consulted our coaching staff. . .”

 

Gee, that’s an explanation of the Bombers’ woes we hadn’t counted on! In what circumstances would you not consult the coaching staff on the draft?

 

Neil Balme (Geelong football manager) apparently dribbled this into his bib about choosing to use the Ablett compensation pick this year: “Probably the logic is if you've got a player you can spend a couple of years working on him, you'll get a better player probably than a first-round pick at the time. . .

 

And how good would the first-round pick be after spending a couple of years on him, Balmy? Or should we say, Barmy? And let’s just quietly gloss over the fact that, at 15, Billie Smedts is a first-round pick.

 

The draft is really like Christmas time for the clubs, except that they get to pick their own presents having previously had the chance to push, prod, poke, shove and x-ray the packages. The uniformly positive reviews from club spokespeople, when intelligible, have much in common with toddlers mauling the latest grant from “Santa”.

 

The list of probably now–ex-AFL players who had nominated, but were not chosen, casts a momentary pall over the raucous enthusiasm. Some, like Jay Neagle, have another possible lifeline, but for most last night was the end of their glory days. We feel for them and hope their resilience allows them to weather this blow to self-esteem. In our dotage, we envy them the experience of even having been part of an AFL locker room. Had Lucifer asked, we probably would have given our left leg for the chance to run out just once. . .  [Sigh]

High-level rules

We’re a bit dim here at AussieRulesBlog Central sometimes. We’d be most grateful if some knowledgeable reader could enlighten us on the benefit of high altitude training in the US (or anywhere else for that matter) in November for an AFL season between March and September played at sea level.

 

Our very basic understanding of physiology suggests that, by March, said high-altitude trainers will have reacclimatised to sea-level conditions again. If the “high-altitude” training were done at Mt Wycheproof (15m), there’d effectively be no wait for the reacclimatisation!

 

If the 2011 Grand Final were to be played at the top of Mt Kosciusko, perhaps there would be an argument for spending a couple of weeks there beforehand (assuming you’d actually made it!).

 

Perhaps the Eagles, Dockers, Lions and Suns could go down to Mawson for a couple of weeks to prepare themselves for the Melbourne winter?

 

Please! Someone explain to us how this is not a joke.

12 angry men

If you were on a jury trying the Bombers for murder and there was this much circumstantial evidence, the vote to convict would surely be 12-0.

 

AussieRulesBlog has already noted our disquiet over the sacking of Knights and the smoke of Machiavellian machinations surrounding Hird’s ascendency. The (according to the media) open secret of Mark Thompson’s arrival at Windy Hill and the ‘leaked’ evidence for accusations that he had been having a tete-a-tete with the Bombers for some time do nothing but add fuel to the suspicions of conspiracy theorists (and impartial observers).

 

We also noted our receipt of a personal call from Essendon CEO, Ian Robson, assuring us that there was absolutely nothing untoward in the recruitment of Hird

 

Nevertheless, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that someone at Essendon, presumably President David Evans and/or Robson, has decided to play very hard ball indeed! I hope the Bombers don't need the other clubs' support on anything important in the near future (10–15 years), because the most they'll get will be the remaining steam off some very, very old crap.

 

Of course, if there's a flag at the end of the rainbow, it will all be judged a masterstroke (in the media).

Hearsay or crystal ball?

Back in the mists of time — 4 November 2010 to be precise; less than a week ago — Michael Gleeson wrote this in The Age:

[Mark] Thompson is expected to be appointed by Essendon this week, probably today, in an assistant coaching role with the Bombers after quitting the Cats on October 4.  . . . Essendon is understood to have only been waiting on chief executive Ian Robson to return to work before making the announcement.

Less than a week later on 8 Nov, via AAP, The Age reports:

James Hird says it would be great to have Mark Thompson join his new-look Essendon coaching staff, while insisting the two-time Geelong premiership mentor has yet to sign a deal with the Bombers.

To be fair, Gleeson’s report did include a little uncertainty — expected, probably today, understood. Nevertheless, merely four days later it looks more like soothsaying than reporting.

Again, to be fair to Gleeson, there has seemed to have been a certain amount of Machiavellian smoke around Windy Hill over recent months. Nevertheless, there’s an indecent distance between probably today and what has eventuated.

We don’t think it’s too much to expect reporting in the mass media to have more credibility than Julius Caesar reading the auguries as favourable before proceeding to the Senate on the Ides of March.

That special “something” . . .

Every club website has lashings of it on every page at this time of year. It’s what keeps us all fronting up year after year.

 

Club membership brochures sell it by the truckload, as does every overly-optimistic report of pre-Christmas training.

 

It is embodied in every AFL draft nomination form — some for the chance to show their wares, for others the chance to make amends or make a new start. Every scouting report carries at least some element of it.

 

The upcoming national draft will play on it as every club parades their potential new superstars to their supporter base. (Well, perhaps not EVERY club. On the Gold Coast people will still be asking, “Gary who?”, and the good burghers of western Sydney will still be wondering who this “Sheeds” chap is and what he is on.)

 

For the black and white army, still drunk on replays of their team’s humbling of the Saints in October, it revolves around “dynasties”. For the seven beaten finalists, it centres on figuring out how to bridge that gap and take that next step.

 

For those teams at the other end of the ladder, it often comes borne by a new coach or a gun new recruit — like that Gary bloke! For the new coach who doesn’t bring it, there is only waiting for the inevitable.

 

Rusted-on supporters often see it everywhere, even though it shimmers like a mirage.

 

It’s the same intangible commodity that Barack Obama mobilised two years ago with the chant, “Yes we can!” It’s the same commodity that gained Kevin Rudd leadership of the ALP and then the Prime Ministership. When both Obama and Rudd failed to live up to it, their popularity sank like a housebrick in a pond.

 

For the lack of it, marginalised people consider the unthinkable.

 

What is it?

 

Hope.

Saints avoid scrutiny

Is there something in the water down at Linton Street?

 

Ross Lyon will be working with pretty much a completely new coaching team for the 2011 season.

 

Brian Royal is the latest to depart the Saints’ coaching team, following Leigh Tudor, Andy Lovell, Tony Elshaugh and Stephen Silvagni.

 

It’s understandable for a coaching group to break up when the senior coach moves on, but, on the back of three successful years and the senior coach remaining in charge, it seems strange to see such dramatic change.

 

Also strange is the lack of rumour and innuendo — although we’re here doing our best to ramp something up! — from the mainstream media soothsayers. Why don’t we have Mike Sheahan or Caroline Wilson or Patrick Smith waffling on about behind the scenes troubles? Or is it just that the five weren’t keen on travelling out to Casey?

 

And I suppose the Saints’ younger players will be a lot harder at the ball with Paul Hudson as new development coach. . .

 

Winter weather in Melbourne, but no football! It’s doing our minds in!

Pre-season six-ring circus

With two additional teams to roster in, the pre-season competition was always going to be in for a significant shake-up. But we’re not sure that the round-robin format for round one doesn’t provide more disadvantage than advantage. And we don’t have a better alternative to put forward as we write.

 

The roster for round one looks like a three-ring circus, but the real sting in the tail comes for the team that gets a ‘rest’.

 

Teams with a break are going to have a hard time keeping their guys active after forty minutes of footy, but without tiring them too much. Entering the third ‘game’ with a list that has cooled down and then has to warm up again is going to be a huge challenge. Are there 28 exercise bikes available at each venue to keep the legs moving?

 

Teams starting in the second ‘game’ will start ‘cold’ against a fully energised and warmed up squad, as will the ‘break’ team after its break.

 

Clearly, the team playing the first two ‘games’ has a substantial head start over their pool rivals, and the ‘break’ team looks set to run a significant soft-tissue injury risk (Again, we haven’t begun to consider alternatives — and it doesn’t matter because this is what’s going to happen!).

 

What’s immediately striking about the announcement is that, at the date of the press release, Operations chief, Adrian Anderson, is still consulting with club fitness departments on solutions to the dilemma.

 

How long have the AFL known about this arrangement? Did someone doodle it on the back of an envelope last week, or have they been working on the pre-season fixture for eight or ten months? Smart money would punt on the latter, yet continuing consultation suggests it’s a relatively recent ‘solution’.

 

It was only two extra teams, yet the ramifications are only starting to be felt.

Great Scott!

Reports that Geelong will announce Chris Scott as their new senior coach suggest that the Geelong Football Club has learned the lesson afforded when it appointed Mark Thompson a decade ago.

 

Thompson, it should be remembered, was a no-frills, no-nonsense half back through three of Essendon’s recent Premierships, the last as captain.

 

Immediately preceding Thompson, neither the flamboyant Malcolm Blight, nor the showy Gary Ayers could manage silverware for the Cats (nor a swag of ex-Geelong players since 1963).

 

It’s worth noting the adjectives we’re using for these three. No frills, flamboyant, showy. And which one brought home the silverware?

 

If the reports are proved correct, we think Scott is an inspired choice, for the simple reason that he had many of the same attributes as a footballer that Thompson had. The style was certainly different and the Scott boys certainly played for keeps, but would happily accept the labels ‘no-frills’ and ‘no-nonsense’ we think.

 

Twin brother Brad has had an excellent start to his senior coaching career, dragging the Kangaroos to the brink of finals contention when nearly everyone — not AussieRulesBlog, we hasten to add — had them set for the lower reaches of the ladder. No doubt that indefinable ‘Shinboner spirit’ played its part, but we think Scott also understands what is needed for his lesser lights to contribute at a level that helps the team get the greatest benefit from their stars.

 

There’s one other benefit from going outside of the Thompson coaching ‘family’ — a completely different message for the players, delivered with a new voice. Just as Thompson could be jaded after ten years, the players may well relish a new flavour to their footy and their pre-season.

 

Adding to the interest will be the new Hird regime at Essendon. It would be hard to imagine a greater contrast than between Hird and the Scott brothers as players. How well superstar Hird understands the minds of mere mortals will go a long way to determining how well the Bombers perform over the next four years.

Trade Week 2010 reflections

Last week, we pondered the effects, a year on, of Brisbane coach Michael Voss’ brainsnap decision to recruit Brendan Fevola by offering up Michael Rischitelli and Daniel Bradshaw.

 

Well, the jury is in. Only the Tigers deemed it necessary to offer a player up without his asking for a move. It’s not all that clear to us why they would have done so, since a team that relied so heavily for scoring on one player, Jack Riewoldt, would seem to be in need of a forward foil with some goal sense. Andrew Collins has seemed, on the few viewings we’ve had of him, to have looked like he could provide a useful contest and some goal sense. Shaun Grigg seems to be more of a defender come midfielder. Curious. Nevertheless, we are Damian Hardwick fans, so we’re prepared to see what happens.

 

What has been stranger to watch has been the merry-go-round of assistant coaches this year. Of course, they all arrive at their new home terribly “excited” about their new team’s prospects.

 

Gavin Brown’s exit from Magpieland and Brendan McCartney’s “defection” to Essendon were the biggest surprises sprung. Outgoing Geelong President Frank Costa seemed resigned in a television interview tonight to the viewthat Mark Thompson will also bob up at Bomberland sooner or later.

 

Brown is probably the more interesting move. His three years coaching the Magpies’ ‘magoos’ suggests he harbours senior coaching ambitions. This year’s Malthouse–Buckley slow-motion coup agreement would appear to close off any avenues at the “Which sponsor do we have this year” Centre. We wouldn’t have thought that assistant to Ratten would look terribly impressive on a CV, but perhaps no-one better credentialed made an offer. Will Brown’s blood boil, or his head spin ’round a la Linda Blair in The Exorcist, when he has to sing We are the navy blues. . .?

 

The framing of the media coverage on the McCartney change has been interesting. A “defection”? Of course the spectre of Thompson turning up as Hird’s mentor, and persistent reports that it has been on the cards for months, seems to suggest some labyrinthine machinations, but defection? We should also note that McCartney had been ‘demoted’ from an assistant role at Sleepy Hollow to overseeing up and comers in the Academy squad this year. It’s hard not to conclude that Thompson had a significant part in that decision. The coach’s rooms at Windy Hill might be an interesting place to be if McCartney and Thompson are to be reunited.

 

On a recent visit to the grandly-titled Windy Hill ‘Precinct’, we didn’t detect anything resembling Checkpoint Charlie (younger people click here for an explanation), so would that mean that the Bombers are on the side of freedom and the Cat Empire are the forces of darkness? Well, cold-war defection did go both ways and we are thoroughly red and black! :-)

 

And there’s only 110-odd or 120-odd days ’til we’re back into the pre-season footy!!  :-(  We can only hope that the Ashes Tests will offer something more diverting than recent summers have managed. The Poms look to have put a decent squad together and the Aussies attack and batting have more holes than a colander. Please let it be close with a series win to the Aussies on the last day of the last Test.

Mitchell oversteps

No, not a cricket story about Mitchell Johnson bowling a no ball!

 

It’s typical of self-appointed guardians of society like Neil Mitchell that they take it upon themselves to flout conventions, regulations or orders protecting the identities of those suspected of some criminal activity.

 

Of course, there’s more than enough precedent in everyday media. Television news broadcasts routinely name people being arrested or being taken into custody, often even when pixellating their images.

 

It’s reasonable to ask why high-profile footballers should be treated any differently.

 

But the real point is that NO-ONE should have their name broadcast before being found guilty.

 

This principle is even more applicable in accusations of sexual assault which can turn on the participants’ varying understanding of consent as it applied in the context of the alleged assault.

 

Let’s be clear that there should be no quarter allowed if the assault is proven to the satisfaction of the law and that the victim must be protected as far as possible from further harm.

 

But let’s also be clear that those accused or suspected of sexual assault are entitled to not bear the opprobrium if the case is not proven.

 

For at least some sections of the community, Steven Milne, Leigh Montagna and Andrew Lovett will be considered sexual predators whether charges were/are sustained or not.

 

It is reasonable and right to guard the identity of the females involved in these cases. It should also be reasonable and right to similarly guard the identities of the males involved up to the point that they are convicted.

 

No conviction, no ‘name and shame’.

We know nuttin’

A report in The Age says the Saints’ coaching staff adjudged Zac Dawson the Saints’ best player in the Grand Final replay.

 

All of us here at AussieRulesBlog Central are a bit reluctant to go to town on individuals — other than Jeff Gieschen, Scott McLaren, and perennial favourite, Stephen McBurney.

 

Zac Dawson the best-performed Saint in the GF replay. Huh?

 

We must confess we regard Dawson as one of the more ordinary players going around at the elite level. His decision-making and disposal are questionable at best, and along with a physique little changed since the monstering by “Pebbles” Rocca which saw him banished back to the Hawks’ reserves, leaves him disadvantaged against all but the weakest of the opposition’s forwards.

 

Zac Dawson the best-performed Saint in the GF replay. Nope. It still doesn’t make any sense.

 

Frankly, the only person looking more lost than Zac last Saturday was Kosi.

 

Zac Dawson the best-performed Saint in the GF replay, and the equal of Hayes and Goddard for the finals series. Please!!! If Ross and his colleagues think this, then, as we foreshadowed in the title of the post, we know nuttin’!

Fevola trade — a year on

It will be interesting, come next Monday afternoon, to look at the trades that have been done and consider the flow-on effects of last year’s disastrous play for Brendan Fevola by Brisbane coach, Michael Voss.

 

How many clubs would be willing to countenance losing club champion Rischitelli, elite goal-kicker Bradshaw and emerging star Henderson for the questionable social skills and on-field narcissism of Fevola.

 

Time will tell whether Voss’ arrogance has condemned Brisbane to an extended period at the less-glorious end of the ladder, but a certain amount of trust between coach and playing group must surely have also been lost in the transaction.

 

Who’s really to know whether Hawthorn have already paid a price for hawking [no pun intended] Campbell Brown around the traps without his knowledge? Is it credible that a man who seemed to epitomise the team spirit of ‘the family club’ would pick up his little red wagon and head north otherwise?

 

However much we may dislike the Trade Week ‘meat market’, it has provided a relatively ordered and civilised means for players to escape poisonous environments and make a new start. More so, the dramatic concessions afforded to the Suns and GWS have empowered some players to visit retribution upon clubs when they’ve been treated shabbily.

We’ll huff and we’ll puff

We wonder about the deliberations of the AFL’s Laws of the Game committee, comprising Messers Adrian Anderson, Kevin Bartlett, Luke Darcy, Andrew McKay, Leigh Matthews, Matthew Pavlich, Luke Power, Rowan Sawers and Michael Sexton.

 

Changing the composition of the bench for the 2011 season from four interchange players to three interchange and one once-only substitute will reduce congestion, increase fairness and, we assume, reduce injuries — or so the AFL would have us believe.

 

On ‘fairness’, teams losing a player early in a game will be less disadvantaged by not losing a fourth bench rotation player. Well, OK, but it’s a pretty marginal argument given the Saints’ second half comeback with at least one ‘cripple’ on the bench in 2010 GF #1.

 

Great play is made of the increase in average interchanges from 58 per game in 2007 to 117 in 2010. Does the committee seriously suggest that there’ll be an average of substantially less than 87 — that’s three-quarters of 117 — in 2011?

 

Will Collingwood only rotate Dane Swan once per quarter now that they’re one down on the bench versus 2010? Of course not.

 

Pretty clearly, midfielders, along with high forwards and their opponents, will continue to be high-rotation players with deep forwards and deep backs the likely candidates to spend more time on the ground.

 

This effective 25% reduction in available interchanges versus 2010 will also, according to Adrian Anderson, reduce defensive pressure and increase disposal efficiency.

 

These expectations fly squarely in the face of common sense, and history suggests coaching staffs will, by next Tuesday at the latest, have worked out how they can manipulate this change to their teams’ advantage.

 

Apparently there is also an injury trend which will be arrested. Quite what that trend is isn’t spelled out.

 

Perhaps Anderson and his committee could have done the game a greater service by mandating that the Gieschen gaggle use the 2010 special ‘Finals’ edition of the rule book from the first bounce of the 2011 pre-season comp?

Tainted love: Redux

We were unexpectedly speaking personally with Essendon CEO, Ian Robson, today.

 

Despite the Machiavellian appearances of the later half of the 2010 season for the Dons, he convinced us that the Knights dismissal and the Hird ascendancy were not linked.

 

We remain sceptics for the Hird appointment rather than enthusiasts.

Tainted love

The apparently Machiavellian machinations that see James Hird appointed to coach Essendon from 2011 leave the club’s and Hird’s credibility in tatters.

Retain ‘Finals’ rulebook

It seems like almost everybody agrees that the 2010 Final Series has been umpired extremely well, Grand Final Mark I even more so.

 

Consistency is a concept we at AussieRulesBlog often associate with umpiring performance. For the umpteenth time, we make the point that the interpretations applied during the final series, and the Grand Final in particular, are seriously different from those employed at the start of the season.

 

It’s hardly the first time these observations have been made. Each year in recent times there are early-season laments about over-zealous umpiring, but by finals time a degree of sanity has prevailed.

 

Must we go through this again in 2011? Surely even that muppet, Jeff Gieschen, who masquerades as AFL Director of Umpiring, can see that people are very happy with the umpiring performance during the finals series and make the decision to keep those interpretations in place for the whole of season 2011?

 

We can’t let the 2010 season slip away (almost!) without another mention of chief zealot, Stephen McBurney, who spent more time on the ground, in the role of emergency umpire, than the three umpires charged with umpiring the 2010 Grand Final. Pundits gave Darren Goldspink a hard time for hogging the limelight, but McBurney puts him well and truly in the shade!

Grand final and its aftermath

No, that lower case ‘f’ in the heading is intentional — note to non-pedants, it should be a capital if it refers to the Grand Final (see?).

 

What an amazing game. The Magpies looked unstoppable early in the first quarter, then the Saints steadied and all but squared the ledger. The Magpies dominated again, but failed to take full toll where it counts — on the scoreboard.

 

In the second half the Saints found a resolve and determination that had been lacking to draw themselves back into the contest and hit the lead in the final ten minutes — only to be headed again by the Magpies.

 

Had the ball bounced as it has ninety-nine percent of the season, Milne has a gift of a goal with barely a minute to play. The footy gods decreed otherwise and a point sealed an enthralling contest. It was, truly, a grand final in every sense of those words.

 

We here at AussieRulesBlog Central are traditionalists. We don’t find anything in the least wrong with a drawn Grand Final. On the contrary, it has everything that is best and proudest about Australian Rules embodied in it.

 

So, that was the good part. What about the rest of the day?

 

Let’s start with catering and call it what it was — a shambles. The Great Southern Stand still looks pretty sprightly, but if the mooted makeover does nothing more than make the catering outlets moderately efficient, footy fans of all persuasions should go down on their knees and offer up thanks.

 

And then there’s the ‘entertainment’. INXS did pretty well belting their three numbers out. The new-ish bloke out front does do a pretty fair job.

 

While the boys did their bit, a Sherrin-shaped hot air balloon (with the Sherrin stood on its point) sat uncomfortably at the centre circle, tied to — apparently — and surrounded by two brace of Toyota Hi-Lux crew cab 4x4. In the basket of said balloon, feverish hands continually activated the propane burner to maintain inflation — 90,000 cubic feet if our eyes didn’t deceive us. The wind desperately tried to bowl the balloon over, such that it appeared at times as though the balloon might self-imolate in some bizarre anti-Magpie protest.

 

A couple of over-eager tugs on the burner lever saw the basket bouncing once or twice in what turned out to be a rehearsal. Would they fly it out of the stadium? Now THAT would be entertainment (especially the bit dodging the cables for Channel 7’s mid-air camera!).

 

We wondered what would happen. After the ‘drama’ of the Tom Thumb cracker-powered cup descent of last year and the crazy dudes on top of vaulting poles the year before — not to mention the hallowed memory of Angry and the Batmobile — the waiting was . . . long!

 

At last, after braving the queue for the bar to rescue a plastic(!) cup of Draught from the mits and gut of some marauding Magpie supporter, we returned to our seat to see the balloon zooming upward to the full extent allowed by the tethers to the Hi-Lux armada.

 

Breathtaking stuff! Would the brakes on the Toyotas hold, or would there be a new worldwide recall on Monday? Would the balloon run out of gas, having already changed one gas cylinder over?

 

No, there was a very special treat in store. Tom Harley was announced walking onto the MGC’s sacred turf. Then, as the balloon pilot gave the burners an extra long spurt of gas, some dude in a red lycra jumpsuit appeared on the ledge of the balloon basket. Next thing we know, he hauls the Premiership Cup into view.

 

What will the dude do? Will he drop it to Tom? Will he lower it on a rope? Will he jump and hope the ’chute opens in 35 feet?

 

Nope. He threw a rope over the side and proceeded to abseil down the rope in an upside-down fashion, clutching the Cup in one hand. The symbolism of this left us speechless. All is forgiven Angry!! Come back, please??

 

Having resumed terra firma, the dude handed the Cup to Tom, who walked about twenty-five meters to hand it to Peter McKenna and Cowboy Neale. Obviously any remaining members of the 1958 Collingwood Premiership team couldn’t be broken out of their retirement homes and nursing homes, so “Pretty Boy” was chosen to do the honours in the event of a Magpie victory.

 

What in the name of all that is footy did all of this mean? Search us!

 

As ‘entertainment’, it was right up there with having finger nails pulled or sticking pins in your own eyes.

 

And while we’re having a grumpy rant, how is it that Stephen McBurney managed to spend more time on the field than on the bench? He was the emergency umpire! The only emergency was wondering if he’d run out of puff when we couldn’t see him! People used to give Darren Goldspink a tough time, suggesting he hogged the limelight! Bollocks! He was a rank amateur. McBurney is the Master.

 

What the hell! We can’t wait until next year week!

What’s in a word?

Regular visitors to AussieRulesBlog will not be shocked to read that we take words pretty seriously. Often there are a number of words that might suffice, but generally there’s only one that’s just right.

 

Tonight, Brownlow Night, we want to take issue with the use of the word win in relation to the Brownlow Medal. Chris Judd has not won his second medal. Rather, it was awarded to him by the umpires who, it is assumed, are are the least biased judges close to the action.

 

So words like received, or conferred or awarded are far more appropriate than win.

 

Why is it important? It’s to do with how the award was gained and whether the recipient had the award in mind during the contest. And we stress here that we are not supported by dictionary definitions.

 

So, for instance, a player who takes a contested mark wins the contest. The winning of many such contests, or at least many more than are lost or halved, may result in media judges conferring an award on the player, as it may also result in the match committee conferring the honour of the best and fairest award. Just as in the Brownlow scenario, these awards are incidental to the actions and attitudes for which they are awarded, and therefore are not won.

 

Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that favoured players are artificially placed into symbolic combative and adversarial roles such that they contest the Brownlow Medal with their peers. The mainstream mass media think they need such adversarial drama to create tension, gain an audience and, therefore, sell more advertising. This effect has been exacerbated with the increasing number of betting markets that are framed about institutions like the Brownlow.

 

It’s not a big issue, but it did get the bee buzzing in our bonnet tonight. And, Yes!, we certainly are a card-carrying pedant!

Loyalty reaps rewards

One hopes the brains trust at the Brisbane Lions are pondering the possibility of having burned three fairly decent players for a sum result of smoke and mirrors.

 

Lachie Henderson looked increasingly like a ready-made replacement for an increasingly injury-prone Jonathan Brown as the season wore on, except that he now plays in the navy blue courtesy of the final Fevola deal.

 

As we noted at the time of Brisbane’s initial shopping of players to Carlton in a bid to secure the services of Fevola, Daniel Bradshaw had made clear his displeasure at this stunning display of disregard and it would only be a matter of time before Michael Rischitelli also moved on.

 

Importantly, the inevitable announcement was made before Brisbane’s best and fairest function this week, leaving Rischitelli smelling of roses, with his conscience clear, and Michael Voss reeking like an open sewer.

 

It’s worth noting that Geelong, a three-time Grand Finalist in three years, has managed to avoid off-loading players due to salary cap pressure. Brisbane, during its heyday between 2001 and 2003, similarly managed to keep an ultra-successful team together.

 

AussieRulesBlog has made no secret of our belief that the Bombers’ disposal of Hardwick, Caracella, Blumfield and Heffernan in the years immediately following that team’s best did more than anything else to drag the Bombers to their current lowly perch on the ladder.

 

Time will tell whether Brisbane can recover from their act of infamy, or whether, like the Bombers, they are destined for a long and slow decline.

Only a technicality

Our beloved game has been brought to a low point through inconsistency. The mild controversy raging over the closing stages of the Second Qualifying Final between St Kilda and Geelong has brought even more inconsistency to the game.

 

Many pundits have queried why the free kick was paid when Mooney fell into Gwilt’s back, the rationale being something along the lines of,

“…technically it was there, but there were others just like it that were missed…”

or

“…technically it was there, but let the game flow in those last few minutes…”.

 

So, now we ask the umpires to adjust how they umpire the game and apply different rules to certain parts of the game?

 

We at AussieRulesBlog find these to be completely fatuous arguments. The rules must be applied in exactly the same way, at every point during the game, in every game from the first practice game to the Grand Final! Consistency of application and interpretation is the single biggest gripe with the game. Yet, when there’s a sentimental moment, many of us are prepared to dismiss consistency on a whim.

 

If the free kick is technically there, then it’s a free kick, end of story. Coaches, players and fans have to be consistent too! The clamour should be to ask why it is not being paid in the same way more often!

It’s official! MRP is a joke

Today’s full report from the AFL’s Match Review Panel doesn’t include any mention of Jarrad Waite’s Academy Award-worthy performance at ANZ Stadium yesterday.

 

As jokes in sport go, the MRP now ranks right up there with Eddie the Eagle, Eric the Eel and scrums in the NRL.

 

The AFL’s much-vaunted sanctions against staging have been revealed, through the course of the season, to be an utter waste of time.

An opportunity to shine

The Match Review Panel has an opportunity presented to it this week to shine. Carlton’s Jarrad Waite performed one of the more blatant examples of staging to be seen on an AFL field in 2010, dropping like a stone and holding his face after a Sydney opponent’s hand brushed him mid-chest.

 

If Waite is not cited, the AFL’s much-vaunted anti-staging sanctions will, once and for all, be seen to be nothing less than window dressing.

 

We wait with bated breath. . . .

Three strikes policy fails human being

It doesn’t take that mythical being, the rocket surgeon, to figure out that there are some problems with the AFL’s three-strikes drug policy in the wake of the Travis Tuck suspension.

 

The most alarming issue, at a club headed by the Chairman of the Beyond Blue initiative, is that Tuck did not feel sufficiently comfortable to discuss his depression with his coaches.

 

There’s no question that AFL is a brutal industry. In the last week alone, a senior coach was summarily dismissed and North Melbourne began delisting players. Whatever we might think about these events, or the awful commoditisation of human beings during trade week, it’s hard to see how these things can be less brutal to individuals within the wider context of the modern game.

 

For a fringe player, such as Tuck, it’s not hard to imagine the football club being a pretty lonely place. For any semi-established player not getting a regular senior game for that matter, the club must seem like a daunting and coldly-clinical place.

 

As fans, we often castigate players and coldly dismiss their efforts. On electronic boards, the fates of players are discussed as if they are pieces of furniture — and AussieRulesBlog is not without blame either.

 

It’s well past time everyone in the AFL industry remembered that we are dealing with human beings, not automatons. And Jeff Kennett, you should hang your head in shame that your club didn’t have the processes in place to identify Tuck’s depression before it got him to this point.

Black and white media to blame

Today’s breathless announcement that James Hird has ‘done a u-turn on coaching’ is disingenuous at best.

 

Hird had made a number of guarded responses to extraordinarily direct questioning over his coaching aspirations. At no stage did he announce he was available to coach Essendon in 2011, yet the lead of a Caroline Wilson piece in The Age this morning scurrilously suggests that was the case.

 

Hird had been asked, somewhat provocatively, to make specific comments about his coaching ambitions. As is common in these situations, his responses were general in nature and sought to give him some wriggle room without putting his hand up as a coaching aspirant in the immediate future.

 

The only place where there has been any misunderstanding has been in the fevered imaginations of ‘journalists’ like Ms Wilson.

 

Not for the first time, the media’s desire for controversy and a one-on-one ‘battle’ between two high-profile people has outweighed any adherence to journalistic principles.

Voracious media create the story

Once again mainstream media have demonstrated their willingness to pursue a story until it fits their needs.  The hounding of James Hird with questions designed to force him into making a controversial statement, and therefore breathing new life into speculation over the future of Matthew Knights, has been scandalous.

 

Aussierulesblog has generally refrained from commenting on issues uniquely affecting the Bombers.  We prefer to think of ourselves as football fans first and foremost, with a strong affection for the Bombers.  However we find the controversy emerging over the last few days requires a note of sanity.

 

When Matthew Knights was appointed, we were mightily unimpressed.  Our assessment of his attributes as a player did not suggest he could be an outstanding coach.  His limited coaching resume did nothing to soothe our fears.  Time, however, has forced us to re-evaluate that assessment.

 

The last three or four years of the Sheedy ascendancy were pretty dismal times for Bombers fans who had become used to success and regular final series appearances.

 

Under Knights, the Bombers played a new and exciting brand of run and carry football.  When this gameplan worked, it was breathtakingly successful.  When it didn't, the team looked second rate.  Some famous successes, including consecutive victories against the hated Blues, seduced some supporters into believing that the team’s glory days had returned.

 

Toward the end of Sheedy’s time, the club had taken a fairly short term view in its recruiting decisions.  This policy doomed Knights to suffer the loss of much of the team’s experience and forced him, whether he wanted or not, into a rebuilding phase.

 

Statistics show that Knights’ record over his three years is superior to Sheedy’s over his last three years.

 

Nevertheless, the Sheedy supporters would not be swayed from the view that their icon had been unfairly removed and held Knights responsible.  There also emerged a rump of supporters attached to the myth that Essendon did not accept mediocre performances.  For this group, anything less than a resounding victory was unacceptable.  These two groups, both with unrealistic expectations, provided a veil of legitimacy for media speculation over Knights’ future.

 

Aussierulesblog wishes to go on record as a Knights supporter.  Without the benefit of hindsight, we considered that the Essendon board had got the timing and the decision on Sheedy right.  With hindsight, perhaps he was given a couple more years than were deserved.

 

The argument can easily be mounted that Knights has not been done any favours by circumstances over the past three years.  To mention just one, the loss of Gumbleton to debilitating injury for more than two years severely limited the development of a new forward line.

 

Convincing victories over acknowledged premiership contenders in both of the last two years suggest that Essendon and Knights have got it pretty right.

The assumption, implicit in the media's pursuit of Hird, that a gifted player will automatically be a successful coach at the elite level is not supported by history.  Of premiership coaches over the last 50 years, only Coleman, Blight, Jesaulenko and Roos would have been considered gifted as players.  So, a mere six of the last 49 premierships have been presided over by coaches who were gifted players.

 

Sentimentally, the notion that Hird could return and lead the club to a premiership is attractive.  Whether it is realistic and whether it justifies removing an incumbent whose record is not all that poor is quite another question. 

Anyone notice a voice missing?

We just realised this morning that the football version of the human headline is no longer newsworthy! Aside from the right-wing rednecks listening to MTR, no-one has heard from Akermanis for a couple of weeks. Removing his listing with an AFL team removes his ability to generate controversy that will be reported in the mainstream media. A pity it took so long to happen.

 

Ed: Does Aker read AussieRulesBlog? Just when we mention the blessed silence, up he bobs with another ‘boot-in-mouth’ contender.

Gieschen a dim bulb

Jeff Gieschen really is a dim bulb. Talk, rather than a better-positioned (additional) goal umpire will solve problems with incorrect goal umpire adjudications, according to Gieschen. This man’s grip on reality is tenuous at best.

 

The Giesch must go!

Laws proposals highlight dangers of tinkering

Does the very existence of Rules of the Game Committee almost require them to propose changes? There seem to be few, if any, compelling reasons for most of the changes proposed this week.

 

We suggested at the time of the Riewoldt and Kerr hamstrings that there would be an impetus for revision of interchange provisions in  the wake of those injuries. Prescient again!

 

Without access to data, it’s hard to comment on how current interchange rules may or may not contribute to injuries, although it is crystal clear that teams losing players, in the first half particularly, are significantly disadvantaged as a result.

 

Another consideration is the extent to which current interchange practices have advantaged some players. We wonder, for instance, whether Dane Swan would have risen to such prominence without constant interchange?

 

Our preference is for a cap that takes the game back a couple of years. Eighty seems to AussieRulesBlog to be a reasonable number. Then let coaches use them as they will. A cap reduces the impact of losing players substantially, while allowing coaches flexibility.

 

In terms of game length, there were changes to how time-on was applied in about 2006, when quarters were reduced from twenty-five minutes to twenty. Clearly the effect of the changes to time-on was too great. Why can we not just wind back that part of the 2006 change? Instead, the Committee proposes to play with the length of quarters again! This is, frankly, the most ill-considered of the proposals.

 

AussieRulesBlog has already identified a number of problems with advantage rule application. We can’t see how the inequities are undone by allowing players to initiate advantage. Players must still make an assumption about the foregoing free kick, leading, as sure as spring follows winter, to a spate of dodgy 50-metre penalties. Another nonsense proposal. the whole advantage situation needs to be rethought rather than tinkered with.

 

We are very unsure about empowering boundary umpires to pay free kicks. The game is inconsistent enough as it is with three separate interpretations on the field already: why would we add another four interpretations?

 

We are pretty comfortable with free kicking the player who drags the ball under an opponent in an attempt to get a free kick. Big tick for this one!

 

We are also quite comfortable with the onus of responsibility for high contact in shepherding to be with the shepherder. Another tick!

 

Frankly, the proposed changes to the scoring system seem to be a spoiler to take some heat off the more contentious of the other proposals. This one is complete and utter nonsense.

 

Finally, AussieRulesBlog asks why the committee did not seek to deal with the biggest single blight on the game at the present moment — the 50-metre penalty.

Zealots rule — again

Watching last night’s Essendon-Carlton game on TV rather than live, courtesy of a broken arm sustained on Thursday, we were staggered at the degree of over-umpiring employed. True, the Giesch’s chief zealot, Steve McBurney was front and centre, but his colleagues on the night participated equally in the orgy of tiggy touchwood frees and overly-technical 50-metre penalties, to the detriment of the game.

 

Were these same umpiring attitudes to be displayed for the seven remaining games of the round, we would be less concerned, but we’d wager a considerable sum against that possibility. As for seeing them next week, well there’s more chance of a thylacine romping down Collins Street on Monday morning.

 

All that the game needs is consistency of approach and consistency of application. The only thing we get from The Giesch and his mob consistently is damnable inconsistency.

 

The Giesch must go!!!!

 

ps: Carlton were the better team on the night courtesy of better finishing. The umpiring, while deplorable, did not contribute materially to Essendon’s performance.

Will a quick game of kick-to-kick suffice?

We have to wonder about the AFL. Not so long ago, they bent every effort to make the game faster and more continuous, most particularly with immediate kick-ins after behinds. Now, we’re told, the game is running too long.

 

Mark Stevens, in the Hun, even makes the extraordinary inference that fans might find a game of kick-to-kick fits into their schedules better — “… other sports are looking at shortened formats to keep fans interested, with cricket’s most popular form now Twenty20.” Seriously, is two and a half hours too long for the modern fan to concentrate?

 

“The real driver is the fans,” says Adrian Anderson. Well, Ando, old mate, what about undoing the immediate kick-in for  start? There’s a way to give players a rest during the game! Some of we fans could do with that rest too!

 

We’ve not finished groaning about the missed shot for goal when the ball is being rushed at breakneck speed through the opposition half-forward line, with our players haring back in desperate pursuit. We could do with a bit less of that.

 

But at a more basic level, Ando, it was the changes you blokes brought in that have created this hydra-headed monster. Rather than making more changes, have you considered winding a few of the recent changes back a bit?

 

And can we (not so) respectfully suggest to Ross Lyon that if he wants two 45-minute halves, he might be better suited to apply for Craig Bellamy’s job. Changing ends less frequently doesn’t bother the british bulldog blokes so much: if the ball’s in the air to be caught by a passing gale, it’s more likely been fumbled by someone than anything else.

 

You have to remember, Adrian, that footy is a little bit like climate change. You poke a bit more carbon dioxide into the air and it makes a subtle change that you don’t see for fifty years. In the meantime, you didn’t notice a change, so more carbon dioxide obviously wasn’t a problem. Then, by the time you realise carbon dioxide is a BIG problem, we’re all addicted to the stuff and we can’t turn the taps off. And the first lot of changes will now be affected even more by new sets of changes, and so on.

 

Every extra change we make to footy makes the game as a whole more like a chaotic weather system. No-one knows how the next lot of changes will turn out because the game is still digesting the changes for five to ten years ago.

Umpires’ intuition or x-ray vision?

We here at AussieRulesBlog have long held that umpires make some decisions based on guesswork. We had intuited this on the basis of a lifetime’s worth of football spectating.

 

Last Saturday evening, watching the last quarter of the North-Essendon game from an unaccustomed seven rows behind the fence, we saw Mark McVeigh fighting hard to gain possession of the ball and pulled to the ground with his back to the umpire. We know this because we were right on the umpire’s line of sight, so we were seeing pretty much exactly what the umpire was seeing.

 

We couldn’t see the ball. We didn’t know whether McVeigh still had the ball or whether a North opponent had taken it from him as they were surrounded by as many as fifteen players and buried under another four or five, with McVeigh still lying on the ground with his back to the umpire.

 

So the picture here is a confused tangle of bodies where we cannot be sure of the location — or possession — of the ball.

 

You know already, dear Reader, what happened next, don’t you? The umpire slowly brought the whistle to his mouth, blew a long blast and then made that awful sweeping gesture to indicate a free kick against McVeigh for not having disposed of the ball correctly.

 

So, the umpire either guessed, or is possessed of x-ray vision.

 

Either way, it’s not appropriate to make decisions on that basis.

(mis)Interpretation rules

Fresh from our mid-season R&R, AussieRulesBlog watched the Saints-Hawks game on television with renewed interest. The mixed blessing of access to the umpires’ audio feed provoked a number of questions.

 

Time to kick

Not for the first time, we noticed that a defender gets barely five seconds to compose himself and plan his kick before an officious voice (imagination required for Steve McBurney here) solemnly intones, “Move it along; play on!” and the umpire does a comical impression of an albatross taking off.

 

As the ball moves further toward the attacking goal, players seem to get more and more time.

 

Once there is a shot for goal involved, in contrast, the time allowed magically expands to twenty seconds before the player is called to start moving.

 

No doubt The Mikado (Jeff Gieschen, for those who haven’t followed the Gilbert and Sullivan association threads) will remind us that goals are important in the game and that players should have a reasonable chance to maximise the effectiveness of their kicks. Nor argument from us there, except that it’s reasonable to apply the same rule across the whole field.

 

Natural arc’ and moving off the line

An umpire in the aforementioned Saints-Hawks game penalised Leigh Montagna for taking a step toward Franklin who had run substantially off his line in taking a kick. The umpire did not call “play on!”, so we have no difficulty with the decision.

 

What did puzzle us though, was the explanation offered to Montagna by the umpire — that Franklin’s “natural arc” saved him from a play on call. Now, we wonder how much natural arc is allowed. If the Grand Final final siren has sounded and the Hawks are down five points with Franklin taking a kick from the right-hand behind post (that is, the behind post is on Franklin’s right side), how much natural arc will be allowed before “Play on!” is called and the match finishes before the kick is taken?

 

Once again, by way of contrast, some defenders seem to do little more than raise an eyebrow before being called to play on.

 

Five-metre zone

We also noticed that Hawthorn have modified the Collingwood tactic of blocking the man on the mark to facilitate a play on move. The Hawks’ method involves stationing someone fairly close to the mark who can quickly come in and block as soon as “Play on!” is called. Invariably, in our observation, the blocking player is within five metres of the player on the mark. When 50-metre penalties are being almost routinely awarded for players infringing the five-metre protected zone, it seems the umpires aren’t a wake-up to this variation on tactics.

Armband aboutface?

After a week of mid-season R&R enjoying the sun in Merimbula — and missing the Akermanis sacking media blitz — AussieRulesBlog sat down to watch the St Kilda-Hawthorn game.

 

What a cracker of a game, with the draw being a fitting result that reduced the over-zealous umpiring effect to minimal.

 

Of greater interest were the armbands worn by each club. We’ve searched high and low this morning, but we can’t find any AFL statement changing their “black armband only” policy, laid down when Essendon first proposed the Call to Arms game to support cancer research and asked permission for both clubs to wear yellow armbands. Not possible said the AFL at the time; allow yellow and there’d be a flood of applications for armbands of many and varied hues.

 

The Saints and the Hawks playing for the Tynan-Eyre Cup each year is a fitting way to remind the community of the danger that our Police face on a daily basis, but the Police check armband isn’t black.

Bowen absence raises questions

As best AussieRulesBlog can ascertain, Corey Bowen, the first-time AFL umpire at the centre of the controversy over five first-half 50-metre penalties resulting in goals to Melbourne in Round 15, did not get an AFL game in round 16.

This despite AFL umpiring boss Jeff Gieschen's assurances, on Monday night on One Week at a Time on OneHD, that all these decisions were correct.

It's not too big a stretch of the imagination to suspect that Bowen has been sent back to lower grades, but is it a punishment?

Were Gieschen's assurances worth the air expelled in uttering them, surely Bowen would have been assigned to another game, if nothing else, to dissuade those of us who might assume otherwise.

We also note that most of the decisions paid by Bowen in round 15 have not been copied by umpires in round 16. Funny that, but of course, according to Gieschen, there can be no question of the umpires deviating from the DVD interpretations distributed at the commencement of the season.

More utter nonsense from the AFL's king of spin! Gieschen must go!

Gieschen fantasy

We’re watching Jeff Gieschen on One Week at a Time on OneHD.

 

We don’t have a special focus from one week to another, says Gieschen. All we’re doing is umpiring to the DVD issued at the start of the season, says Gieschen.

 

Jeff, go down to the back corner of your garden, take a picture of the fairies and email it back to us!

 

Wanker!

The other man’s grass. . .

Can it be that Ross Lyon is complaining that returning star Nick Riewoldt received too much physical attention from opponents?

 

What????

 

Is this the same Ross Lyon who coaches St Kilda, the team that serial pest and convicted star terroriser Steven Baker plays for?

 

We know that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, but this is bordering on the absurd.

 

It was only two weeks ago that Baker was assaulting Steve Johnson. Would Lyon have us believe that Baker took it upon himself to badger Johnson in that way? Does he seriously imagine that we could think those actions weren’t at least tacitly approved by himself?

 

Pull the other one, Ross, it plays Jingle Bells!

“Fifty” must go!

Five first-half 50-metre penalty goals to the Demons in their game against Essendon — all of them technically “there” perhaps, all of them severe and over-zealous interpretations on even the most charitable assessment and counter to the generally prevailing interpretations for the rest of the season and, without having the benefit of checking the replay yet, all of them the work of one umpire it seemed — accounted for the Demons lead at half time.

 

It matters not that the Demons looked the better team and deserved to win. If it were not already obvious, the application and severity of the 50-metre penalty must be reassessed.

 

As best AussieRulesBlog can determine, the umpire involved, Corey Bowen, was umpiring his first AFL game. Despite our deep frustration, we understand that nervousness on the big stage for the first time could lead to over-zealous officiating. Hopefully, he will learn from the experience, but the AFL must also learn the lesson that a blanket reliance on 50-metre penalties is damaging the game.

 

AussieRulesBlog is happy to concede that 50 metres is appropriate for deliberate and clearly-obvious time-wasting or for deliberate violence.

 

Interchange infringements seem to us to be pretty minor in the spectrum of offences. If a team has an extra player on the field due to sloppy interchanging and either that player is involved in the play or is on the field for more than, say, five seconds, we’re happy with a 50-metre penalty. If those conditions are not met, forget it.

 

Offences at the mark should be dependant on whether the umpire has set the mark. If a player runs over the mark immediately subsequent to a legitimate attempt to spoil, carried there by his momentum, providing he immediately attempts to take up a more realistic mark and moves backward to assume a more realistic position, no penalty should be applied. An umpire could adjust that positioning without penalty, provided reasonable instructions were obeyed.

 

We are all for penalising players who intentionally drag down a player who has marked, if the tackling player was not in the marking contest. This does constitute time wasting and the 50-metre penalty is appropriate.

 

If, however, the players are involved in a contest for the mark, that is, they are touching or almost touching each other, regardless of whether the defending player actually makes contact with the ball, the tackling/defending player is not wasting time, but competing for the ball. Applying a 50-metre penalty in these circumstances reduces Aussie rules to a game of netball.

 

As custodians of the game, it is incumbent on the AFL to introduce a lesser penalty — perhaps 25 metres — for some lesser-severity offences. The lesser penalty may also reduce the impact of incorrect decisions.

 

We would also hope that umpires beginning their senior AFL careers might be past nervousness.

Execution ends torture by a thousand cuts

It’s hard to figure out what medium-term benefits Port Adelaide gain from sacking their senior coach after fifteen rounds.

 

Short term, the players are likely to play out of their skins against an in-form Collingwood tonight. Mick Malthouse cannot be pleased to hear of his fellow coach’s demise.

 

Longer term, Port have plenty of time to identify available coaching talent and scoop the cream before others have a chance.

 

In the medium term, whoever takes over as caretaker has little option but to continue with the Williams gameplan. It’s too late in the season to contemplate significant restructure.

 

From half a country away, it seems to have been a media-driven frenzy of speculation for the last eighteen months over Williams’ future, relations with CEO and Board, relations with players, relations with assistant coaches, and relations with whoever could be used to create the impression of discord.

 

It may be that there is and was genuine discord between Williams and one or many of the aforementioned groups, but there’s little doubt that the media in general have blood on their hands tonight.

Umpires: survey of perceptions

Rob Gill, of Swinburne Uni, has posted a link to a survey he’s running of perceptions of umpires. here’s the post:

Greetings footy fans
I am researching the AFL umpires and our perceptions of their performance.
Would very much appreciate you taking a few minutes to complete this voluntary survey (link below). Rest assured your answers will remain completely anonymous.
http://opinio.online.swin.edu.au/s?s=AFL_Umpires_2010
Please feel free to pass it on to any friends and associates who might like to have their say!
Thanks
Rob Gill
Swinburne University of Technology

AussieRulesBlog has already responded to the survey. We indicated, as best we were able given the questions asked, that ‘problems’ with umpiring, at least at the AFL level, are more to do with direction from the AFL umpiring department and much less to do with individual umpires’ performance. We even included our daily prayer: Release The Giesch!!!! Feel free to pass my response on to The Giesch, Rob!

 

Anyway, if you’re reading this, be a good little Vegemite and give Rob some data for his research.

Homegrown a surer bet?

There has been much made of the performance of young Irishman Michael Quinn in the Bombers’ 84-point drubbing at the hands of the Crows. Quinn had eight possessions, but, with clangers and frees against, finished the night on zero Supercoach points.

 

AussieRulesBlog admires the young bloke’s gumption to up sticks and travel halfway round the world to have a crack at a foreign football code.

 

Quinn is one of the results of either:

  1. a myth that the Draft is the only source of potentially capable players; or
  2. a belief that the next Jim Stynes is lurking somewhere in a young Irish body.

We don’t have any stats to back it up, but our impression is that the ranks of Irish VFL/AFL stars are pretty thin. The aforementioned Stynes, Tadgh Kennelly, Marty Clarke and Sean Wight would be about it. Setanta O’hAilpin tries hard but still looks like a fish out of water. Stynes’ brother, Brian, managed a few games, but didn’t have his brother’s touch in the foreign code and another O’hAilpin had a try, without success.

 

It’s hardly a Hall of Fame roll call, yet clubs and recruiters have kept going back to kiss the Blarney Stone and light the fire of hope in young Irish hearts.

 

The lot of local kids who enter the Draft, but aren’t picked, has been pretty dim. At 17 or 18, a bunch of recruiters pass a judgement on your worth and your papers are stamped. For many, that stamp is NOT UP TO AFL STANDARD.

 

Thankfully, once almost by accident and once with a pleasing degree of persistence from the player and prescience from the recruiter, in 2010 we’ve seen an inkling that so-called mature-age recruits — Michael Barlow is an ancient 22 years! — still have something to offer.

 

The Podsiadly story is by now so well known that we need not repeat any of it. Suffice to say that Geelong’s lucky rabbit’s foot was involved in them recruiting the 28-year-old as an ancillary whilst he played for the Cats’ VFL team. The 2010 story is of an emerging key forward averaging something approaching four goals per game — admittedly with the competition’s premier midfield delivering the ball to advantage more times than not.

 

Poor ‘old’ Michael Barlow must have thought himself destined for the dimmer lights and lighter pay packets of the VFL, SANFL and WAFL, if he was lucky. Fremantle’s gamble has paid off handsomely with Barlow getting plenty of attention in Brownlow Medal betting markets. His broken leg is a setback, but we should all hope he recovers like Michael Voss rather than like Nathan Brown.

 

It’s so obvious that it hardly needs pointing out, but, unlike Quinn and O’hAilpin, Podsiadly and Barlow already knew how to play Aussie rules. How much coaching time spent on Quinn and O’hAilpin could have been better spent honing the skills of a Barlow or a Podsiadly.

 

More recently, the high-profile signings of Karmichael Hunt and Israel “The Promised Land” Folau risk the same outcomes as Quinn and O’hAilpin. Of course, in the push into hostile NRL territory, Hunt and Folau offer a publicity edge that is attractive, but their playing worth is yet to be tested. One wonders what Hunt is thinking after his first couple of outings for Gold Coast.

 

We hope that AFL clubs and recruiters learn the lesson: there are plenty of local kids who were too small, too slow or too immature. They can now make a substantial and relatively quick transition to effective players, rather than the four or six-year lead times for an international hopeful.