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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.