The Australian open has been run and won — yawn! — and the pyjama cricket series has provided a blip of brightness on the Australian national cricket scene — yawn! The nation’s yearly flirtation with yachting is now a distant memory — zzzzzzz — and the hayburners have settled into their normal routine again after the colour and excitement of the Spring Carnival — ever so slightly more interested now that AussieRulesBlog’s progeny owns an eventer.

After the ‘drama’ of FFA’s fanciful bid for FIFA’s World Cup, the Socceroos extra time loss to Japan in the Asian Cup final has added an exclamation mark, despite, it seems, perennially overly-optimistic predictions for the national team.

So, the distractions are out of the way and it’s once again Aussie Rules’ turn to capture sporting hearts and minds — and a good thing too!

In eleven days the ‘phoney war’ of the pre-season competition commences. This year we have the added distraction of a mini-lightning premiership first round which will do little to provide any guides to early form, especially for those teams with the long breaks.

It will be a surprise if any of Adelaide, Carlton, WCE, Essendon, GWS or Geelong make any further appearance in the primary competition, but we don’t consider than as necessarily a negative. The secondary Challenge series still sees teams pitted against other AFL outfits — other than GWS and, perhaps, the Suns at this stage — but with more opportunity for coaches to experiment and find out about what their players can manage.

We think these four weeks will be crucial to coaches figuring out how they’ll manage the new interchange arrangements, so there’s more than just a chance for a good competitive hitout.

It can’t come quickly enough! We’re like a kid waiting at the Christmas tree for Mum and Dad to wake up so we can rip into our presents!

The Age is running a story today (alluding to new CBA negotiations between the AFL Umpires Association and the AFL) under the headline “AFL umpires may turn professional in new deal”.

Amongst the arrangements under discussion, umpires could multi-task, as in boundary and goal umpires awarding free kicks and umpires could officiate in more than one game per weekend.

Association chief, and former VFL umpire, Bill Deller says, “The AFL are looking for … improved productivity. In our instance, improved productivity would be improved decisional accuracy.”

Accuracy is one thing, Bill, but for AussieRulesBlog the key to improved umpiring productivity would be improved consistency and a reduction in guesswork and assumption.

We’re not sure how a fully-professional umpire would fill his or her day, although we’ll quickly concede that the demands of elite level umpiring are in conflict with full-time high-level paid work.

Could we see an umpiring version of Fev if fully-professional umpires had too much free time on their hands? No, you’re right. That’s completely at odds with the mentality required to be an umpire in the first place!

All jokes aside, we think more time for physical preparation, practicing decision making, reviewing video and, potentially, more game time can only be good for the game. The rider must always be consistency though.

And since we’re on the consistency issue, it would be useful for the AFL to find some way to inform patrons actually sitting in the seats at the stadium about decisions made by umpires — through the scoreboard would seem to be the obvious route.

This is especially the case where a free kick is paid for an off-the-ball infringement. When you’re sitting at the game it can be intensely mystifying when the ball is called back 100 metres and gifted to the other team.

Can we wait until Steve McBurney retires for multi-game professionalism? The thought of him wandering around twice each weekend makes the hairs on the back of our neck crawl.

We are officially stupid. There’s no doubt.

AussieRulesBlog was somewhat confused today to read a reference to the round one pres-season competition ‘games’ being two 20-minute halves. A Herald-Sun article on the Bombers’ plans discussed a 90-minute break between ‘games’. We figured the only way there could be a 90-minute break would be for each ‘game’ to be of only 20 minutes duration. We also thought that this arrangement evened out the risk of soft tissue injury. Confused? We obviously were, so we went searching.

It took a while — the AFL website is not a friendly place to be seeking information — but we did finally turn up an AFL web page that mentioned 40-minute games and an inconspicuous link to a PDF file (undated and marked confidential, so we feel just a little less stupid for not having seen it) explaining the round one arrangements. (We should have twigged that the average footy supporter couldn’t occupy their minds for 65 minutes without some assistance.)

Well, the old master is at it again. Kevin Sheedy’s track record of innovation has a pretty good success rate. He was among the first Aussie Rules coaches to require that his key position players could perform at either end of the ground as required. He was at least partly responsible for the now-traditional annual Anzac Day game between Essendon and the Barcodes. His embrace of indigenous footballers led to the annual Dreamtime at the ‘G’ game.

But AussieRulesBlog thinks he’s gone too far with his suggestion of “AFL 11s” as a Twenty-20-style truncated version of Aussie Rules.

Forty years ago, there was no such things as one day internationals (ODI) in cricket — until the 1971 Melbourne Test was virtually washed out and players decided to give the Melbourne public some sort of cricket show.  One day cricket was thereafter seen as a means of developing spectator interest in cricket which would, over time, enhance spectator interest in Test cricket.

When one day cricket crowds started to falter, Twenty-20 (T20) cricket was devised to condense a cricket match into three hours or so to maintain spectator interest.

No-one will deny that, Ashes Test series aside, spectator and TV audience interest in Test cricket has continued to decline despite ODIs. Now, as interest in ODIs declines, T20 will similarly fail to halt the slide.

Of course the task Greater Western Sydney (GWS) confronts in developing a fan and spectator base is formidable, but we’re not sure how an eleven-a-side game played on a soccer or rugby pitch is going to promote Aussie Rules.

Let’s look again at the cricket scenario. ODIs have only the barest of synergies with traditional, multi-day cricket. The subtleties and nuance of first-class cricket are lost in a formularised, predictable contest. Similarly, T20 removes any pretence at subtlety and replaces it with manic big hitting.

Now, if you wanted to introduce someone to first-class cricket, would you take them to a T20 game? Of course not. Similarly, first-class cricket serves as a particularly poor introduction to T20. They are, to all intents and purposes, different games. Not unlike AFL played on a soccer pitch really. . .

Notwithstanding the difficulties facing GWS, do we really want to begin travelling a path similar to cricket? We already have such nail-biting and revolutionary devices as so-called Super goals (yawn) in the AFL pre-season competition.

It will be interesting to see how the upcoming first round of mini-lightning –premierships in a few weeks pans out. AussieRulesBlog expects an almost universal lack of fulfilment from these truncated games.

Will T20 further evolve into some sort of hitting competition, perhaps with a mechanical ‘bowler’? Would Sheedy’s AFL11s eventually mutate into some sort of AFL penalty shoot out?

If there were falling attendances and spectators seemed to be demanding some quicker, more compact variant of AFL, there may be some justification, but attendances remain generally healthy.

Our big concern, for cricket as well, is that having created a shorter form of the game and attendant expectations, it might be quite difficult to squeeze that toothpaste back into the tube.

It’s a bit much for Ross Lyon to threaten the players of sixteen other clubs with vilification complaints if they “cross over community standards” and taunt his captain over the running sore that has been the naked pictures. All very nice to take a holier than thou approach and conveniently forget the presence on his list of serial standard crosser Steven Baker.

Were it another club’s captain that was embroiled, would Lyon instruct his players, especially Baker, not to venture into dark sledges about nude photographs? Not bloody likely.

AussieRulesBlog chastised Barcodes coaches Mick Malthouse and Paul Licuria last year, not so much for what they said to the Saints’ Steven Milne, but for the inappropriateness of their interaction with an opposition player and their economy with the truth — less charitable people might suggest they lied — when later questioned.

Lyon suggests the Malthouse-Milne incident as one where “community standards” were trashed and uses it as a justification for threatening players at other clubs should they sledge Riewoldt.

We wonder whether Lyon has created yet another millstone for his captain to wear. Not only were the pictures publicised, but Riewoldt now looks like a crybaby relying on his coach to keep the bad boys from saying nasty and hurtful things to him. Riewoldt does have some form in this respect after all (even though we supported him in those instances).

But what sticks in our craw most is Lyon’s failing memory. It’s only a year ago that the Saints crossed a community standard themselves — a person is innocent until found guilty in a court of law. By declaring a contracted player guilty of a crime before he’d had a chance to face a jury of his peers, the Saints were happy to act as judge, jury and executioner when it suited them.

We suspect the mental strength of the Saints’ prima donna will receive some searching tests in the coming season. Will he thank his coach and his teammate when the dust has settled?

There is disturbing news today that NRL’s Newcastle Knights appear set to be taken over by mining magnate Nathan Tinkler. Tinkler recently came to an arrangement with A-League’s Newcastle Jets.

AussieRulesBlog knows nothing of Tinkler beyond what we’ve read. We make no suggestion that he will do anything untoward in his stewardship of these sporting organisations.

Nevertheless, private ownership of sports teams in Australia has a chequered history. Most infamously, Christopher Skase owned the Brisbane Bears AFL licence, with a succession of owners following until the club was eventually restructured to provide for a traditional membership structure.

Only a few years ago, North Melbourne managed to find a way out of its corporate ownership tangle and back to traditional membership.

More recently, there have been issues between supporters of A-League’s Gold Coast United and backer, “billionaire” chairman Clive Palmer. Reports in 2009 that Palmer would withdraw funding suggested the team would fold without Palmer’s money.

And who can forget the self-serving efforts of News executives in and around Melbourne Storm’s salary cap debacle?

Even in that bastion of capitalism, the United States, private ownership of sporting teams hasn’t always been the happiest of scenarios. A recent, well-publicised radio rant against the Washington Redskins being an example.

Recently-installed owners of EPL teams have been having their impact with managers being shown the door — admittedly not all that unusual in EPL.

Let’s be clear that in some cases, such as North Melbourne, the club would not now exist without wealthy individuals having put their hands into their very deep (and full!) pockets. Many Fitzroy traditionalists would have welcomed a corporate saviour rather than embrace the ‘merger’ with Brisbane.

In the Australian context — about 22 million people scattered around the edges of a huge island continent — economies of micro-scale and trials of geography mean that it’s difficult, at best, for sporting clubs to break even.

For some teams, like the Sydney Swans, Brisbane Lions and Melbourne Storm, isolated in enemy code territory, a financial drip is a necessity.

For others, playing to often bare stadiums in the NRL, poker machines provide a financial lifeline.

There may be, perhaps, a dozen clubs around the country that could be classified as self-sufficient, all things being equal.

And it’s the “all things being equal” rider that brings the spotlight back to private ownership.

If a private owner, or “backer”, falls upon hard times (and how hard is that in this globalised world?), then teams fold and the very viability of leagues is credibly called into question.

Will David Gallop now be considering Nathan Tinkler, Russell Crowe and their business interests in NRL decisions, or will the good of the game win out.

Thank goodness, AussieRulesBlog’s Aussie rules is as financially strong as it is, without the necessity for private money.

Edit: It has come to our notice that we have got entirely the wrong process in mind in this post. Please see our more recent post, We're confused, for a full mea culpa.

Back in October when the broad details for the 2011 pre-season competition were released, AussieRulesBlog expressed concern for the team playing in the first and third games.

In the first round of the competition, Team A will play a 20-minute ‘half’ versus Team C, then a 20-minute ‘half’ against Team B, followed by Team B and Team C competing in a third 20-minute ‘half’.

The Hun reports today that teams playing the first and third games will be able to use as many players as they want and will have a 90-minute break between games.

We noted in October that the AFL were still involved in discussions with clubs and their fitness staffs about how these mini lightning premiership formats would be implemented.

We also commented that Team A and Team B would be advantaged by both continuity and coming up against a team that had not warmed up in match conditions.

As is now made clear in the fixturing, attempts have been made to mitigate some of these advantages.

The second game will commence 65 minutes after the start of the first game, and the third 65 minutes after the start of the second.

With 20-minute game duration, that’s a 40-minute break between games.

Team A and Team B will, apparently, be limited to a normal 18-man plus interchange squad. Team C, meanwhile, will be free to introduce as many replacement players as they like.

From a fitness and player management perspective the playing field has been considerably evened. But we’re left with an even more insidious problem.

With 40-minute breaks between games, will the AFL roll out Grand Final style ‘entertainment’ between games?

Or perhaps we should just pack a copy of War and Peace in with our normal footy gear?

When the Bombers announced Scott Lucas was joining their coaching panel with a brief to work with the club’s emerging forwards, AussieRulesBlog was less than impressed, but we’re now prepared to admit we hadn’t considered the matter fully.

Holding forth on the matter with our sibling, we highlighted Lucas’ legendary lack of handballs as an indicator of an individualist rather than a team contributor. We didn’t see Scott Gumbleton, Jay Neagle and young Joe Daniher popping goals from 55 metres and didn’t relish the idea of them learning individualist traits. Our view was, and remains, that Lucas’ best season was his first Crichton Medal-winning year at centre half-back.

Our sibling, also a keen Bombers supporter, gently reminded us that Lucas could hardly have clocked up 270 AFL games if he wasn’t doing what the coach had instructed him to do. And here we come to the point of this post.

For the media, punditocracy, blogosphere and fans, sitting outside the fence and not privy to the detail of team planning, team dynamics and coaches’ instructions, it’s easy to pontificate on player performances — and we do! But we are, to all intents and purposes, doing so from behind a blindfold.

So, dear reader, when next you gird your loins to pour forth a stream of abuse at Player X — we all have one, don’t we? — take a moment to remember that they’re probably doing what they’ve been told to do and are, despite appearances to the contrary sometimes, trying their best to win the game for their team.

After writing about the Ashes disaster and the possibility that James Hird and Nathan Buckley might write further storied chapters in their lives yesterday, we happened upon an interesting story in a non-sports blog.

Seth Godin is an American marketing guru. His blog is a collection of thoughts on the general theme of small, independent business entrepreneurs. Not the place you expect to see sports-oriented wisdom, but we liked this one.

Zig Ziglar [a sales guru] used to tell a story about a baseball team on a losing streak. On the road for a doubleheader, the team visited a town that was home to a famous faith healer. While the guys were warming up, the manager disappeared. He came back an hour later with a big handful of bats. "Guys, these bats were blessed and healed by the guru. Our problems are over."

According to the story, the team snapped out of their streak and won a bunch of games. Some people wonder, "did the faith healer really touch the bats, or was the manager making it up?" Huh? Does it matter?

Are James Hird and Nathan Buckley faith healers (in the sense of Godin’s blog post)? Do their very records and stature in the game lift the morale and enthusiasm of their teams?

In the end, Godin is right. It doesn’t matter how the team is empowered, but it does give pause to think . . .

In the wake of England’s rout of Australia in the just-concluded Ashes series, there are calls for changes in Australian cricket. We think the emphasis will fall on coaches and selectors (we’re influenced by this article by Test great Dean Jones). And this brings the question of coaches’ influence on elite sportspeople to the fore, yet again.

Coaches’ influence and background is a question AussieRulesBlog has looked at a number of times — here. In AFL ranks, it seems only those with playing experience at that level get a gig — Neil Craig and Wayne Brittain being the most recent of a tiny handful of exceptions, and Brittain had served a substantial apprenticeship under David Parkin.

In speculation over AFL coaching vacancies there are often VFL coaches mentioned, especially North Ballarat’s Gerald FitzGerald recently, but none have so far got to hold the reins at an AFL club. At one time Joyce Brown, former national netball coach and mother of Carlton firebrand Fraser Brown, was being seriously touted as a potential VFL/AFL coach, but AFL keeps very much to the tried and true formula.

In contrast, cricket, as Dean Jones points out, doesn’t currently have a coach at Sheffield Shield or national level with substantial Test-level experience.

It’s worth noting two things about the cricket situation: coaches, at least at the national level, traditionally play more of a supporting role to the Captain; and John Buchanan, with a mere 7 first-class matches and 160 runs for Queensland, was Australian coach through one of Australia’s most dominant periods.

Another crucial difference between cricket and AFL is the match day role. The big decisions on the cricket field are the captain’s — field placement, bowling changes, batting order — while AFL captains choose which end to kick to and then take up a largely symbolic role, albeit often inspirational.

We are particularly interested in the influence of coaches at the moment as we contemplate the year ahead for our beloved Bombers under debutant coach and all-time club great James Hird and 2012 for the Barcodes under their all-time club great Nathan Buckley.

The most immediate contrast to draw is the raft of reports from players of the first Hird-directed pre-season being significantly tougher than those under Matthew Knights and, largely by implication, Kevin Sheedy.

Dean Jones makes the point that the resurgence of Australian cricket in the mid-1980s began with the appointment of Test legend Bob Simpson as coach. Simpson “was as hard as nails and rode all of us players 24/7” and “Three-hour fielding sessions were the norm”, according to Jones. Simpson was a gritty and determined opener, but capable of brilliance. Clearly Australian cricket at the time was at such a low ebb that Simpson treading on toes to take charge as coach wasn’t an issue.

In AFL, there have been few prodigiously-talented players who’ve gone on to achieve coaching success. As we’ve noted previously, the ranks of Premiership coaches in the last fifty years are dominated by gritty and determined backmen who made their mark in spite of limited talent.

John Coleman, Paul Roos, Malcolm Blight, Alex Jesaulenko and, arguably, Leigh Matthews are the naturally-talented players who achieved the ultimate success accounting for only ten of the last fifty Premierships (and Matthews contributing four of those).

Can James Hird and Nathan Buckley add their names to the ranks of Roos, Blight and co? If determination counts for anything, yes they can.

Has Hird arrived at the right time to take advantage of Matthew Knights’ list building over the past three years?

Does the 2010 Premiership dull the hunger of the playing group as Buckley takes the reins for 2012?

Will either or both of them make Bernie Quinlan look like a master coach? Sure, that’s unlikely, but it will be an interesting couple of years.

Happy New Year AussieRulesBloggers!

This morning we have cause to remember a TV documentary, The Draft, that aired around eleven years ago.

In that documentary, shining a light inside the 1998 AFL National Draft, three players were highlighted — Adam Ramanauskas, Des Headland and Brendan Fevola.

Headland was taken at #1 by Brisbane with a priority pick, Ramanauskas at #12, the Bombers’ second pick, and Fevola at #38.

In a result reminiscent of Michael Apted’s famous 7 up series of TV documentaries, Ramanauskas was clearly the most level-headed of the trio.

Fast-forward to early 2011 and all three players have had their ups and downs.

Headland was a prominent member of Brisbane’s 2002 Premiership team, was traded to Fremantle at the end of 2002 and otherwise had a fairly chequered career defined by inconsistency for a total of 117 games.

Ramanauskas, a Premiership player in 2000, is a revered elder statesman of the Bombers and a shining example to those battling adversity, having twice returned to the field following cancer treatment. Ramanauskas has been a prominent member of the Bombers’ game-day support team since his retirement at the end of 2008 with a  total of 163 games.

Fevola is a two-time competition leading goalkicker and three-time All Australian. One of the competition’s best key position forwards, Fevola has never been far from controversy and this continues into 2011. We can only wonder what part his personality has played in his on-field success — and controversies — and dream of what he might have achieved without it. Aussie Rules immortality perhaps?