Well, after seven months, here we are on the eve of the culmination of the season. AussieRulesBlog doesn’t have the sense of anticipation we’ve had in the past, but perhaps that’s more about our recently-changed day-to-day circumstances and our not having a ticket to the big dance this year.

Intuitively, it has felt like a season of significant upsets, and yet, the Cats aside, those expected to figure at the pointy end have done so. A few sides have performed above expectation, but more have failed to live up to the pre-season or early-season hype.

With a wintry blast buffeting Victoria this weekend, we’re not terribly disappointed not to be heading to the G tomorrow, but we will really miss watching the setup and execution of the traditional Grand Final ‘entertainment’. Perhaps Vlad and his henchmen have stolen that ghastly truck/boat thing that Wills and Kate sprinted around the Solomon Islands in? Surely the worst vehicle dress-up since the infamous Angry Anderson ‘Batmobile’!

Whatever it is, the entertainment is sure to be half-baked, cheesy and amateurish and, in a way, that’s why it fascinates us. A bit like one of the awful movies that garner cult audiences.

Roll on 4.30pm and a close result!

We hope it's not becoming a habit, but we're again breaking our self-imposed rule not to focus on the Bombers.

Jake Niall's story in today's Age highlighting the implications for other players of free agency gives just a little idea of the deliberations that confront AFL list managers almost daily.

Essendon's interest in Brendon Goddard leaves veteran David Hille, speedster Alwyn Davey, hard nut Sam Lonergan and perennially-injured Scott Gumbleton swinging in the breeze.

For what it's worth, AussieRulesBlog thinks Goddard's best is well behind him, although a new environment may curb the petulance that has blighted his career thus far.

On the other side of the coin, Hille wouldn't have more than a year left and might expect to see a fair bit of VFL action in 2013. Davey's only weapon is his speed, which is devastating occasionally, but he's a long way short of Cyril Rioli's impact. Lonergan is as hard at the ball under the pack as anyone on the Dons' list, but his disposal and finishing are pale in comparison with, say, Watson. And Gumbleton? Who knows? Occasional flashes suggest a prodigious talent, but injury has cruelled his development and we have to wonder whether he can now get close to fulfilling his potential.

Does a potentially re-energised Goddard compensate for these four? The heart says no, resoundingly.

This though, is the brave new world that the players wanted. It's terrific for those in demand: not so good for those on the fringes. We wonder what Hille, Davey, Lonergan and Gumbleton thought of the free agency proposals when they were discussed. Did they imagine they'd be potential collateral damage in a big free-agency play?

It's not only the Bombers playing the waiting game. The Travis Cloke saga remains unresolved and a good many other players wait to see whether their club will have room for their paypackets depending on where Cloke finishes up.

AussieRulesBlog hates Trade Week and the ritual cancelling of careers that the AFL imposes on clubs every year, and we feel deeply for the players so summarily thrown onto the scrap heap. For once though, the players can't complain. It was their association that was complicit in the free agency system, for good or ill.

Tim Lane makes some very valid points about video decision assistance in general and the AFL’s system specifically.

The Toovey decision, where the camera positioning was serendipitously perfect to deliver a conclusive amendment to what the goal umpire had perceived, seems to prove the case that using video technology makes the game better by helping to get the decisions as right as they can be.

And the goal called by goal umpire Chelsea Roffey where the ball may have been touched as it crossed the line proves yet again, if such proof were needed, just how imperfect the AFL’s system is and how there may never be anything that approaches perfect.

There’s a common factor between these two decisions, surprising as that may seem. In both cases, the TV camera was placed at an angle to the goal line. In the Toovey case, that camera happened to be at pretty much exactly the right angle to show clearly that the ball came off Toovey’s upper leg. In the Roffey decision, a camera at an angle to the goal line wasn’t able to show where the ball was, two metres above the ground, in relation to a line marked on the ground, as it was touched by a Sydney player’s hand.

It’s the angles that are the problem! In the Toovey case, the angle worked, but for almost every other case, it simply doesn’t allow a definitive judgement.

When the camera is positioned right on the line, as in the left-hand illustration, there’s a reasonable chance of determining where the ball is in relation to the goal line (unless obscured by the goal post). In the right-hand illustration, that relationship between the ball and the line is changed by the angle. there can no longer by any certainty about where the ball is in relation to the line.

What’s the upshot of all this as we careen toward the end of the first video review season? Well, it’s obvious. The system as it is currently, works in a small percentage of cases but is useless for the majority. If the broadcaster or the AFL were to spring for sixteen or more, high-speed, high-definition, constantly-monitored goal line cameras, there’s a fair chance they’d eliminate about 90% of potential errors. That’s it.

Bring out the canvas curtain and administer the lead aspro before 2013. We were all much happier when Adrian and The Giesch thought there were only about six goal umpiring errors per season. Now we know there are more, but we can’t do a damned thing to remove them. Thanks for nothing, guys.

It was the back half of the 2011 season and pundits were pondering whether Special-K would be able to legitimately claim a place in the Gold Coast Suns’ team as a footballer, rather than as a marketing exercise.

Fast-forward a year. Those same questions are being asked of The Promised Land after a less-than stellar first season at the elite level, but no-one is any longer credibly suggesting that Special-K isn’t a bona fide AFL footballer after his second season.

AussieRulesBlog isn’t suggesting that The Land has to follow K’s trajectory, but it’s not at all far-fetched, in our opinion, to suppose that a proven elite sportsperson gains confidence through a first full season that finds expression through a second pre-season.

A year ago, the pundits were trying to figure out where the Suns could hide K in their backline. Somewhere where his lack of footy smarts wouldn’t be exposed on the scoreboard. This year he has announced himself as a genuine midfielder.

We’re really pleased that The Land has committed himself to seeing out his contract with the Giants. A great deal can happen in two years and another pre-season may just see him find his niche and begin to earn his place in the team beside his teammates. You can bet your life that it irks his professional pride that he’s getting games he thinks he doesn’t deserve. We’re betting on him making it.

What’s more, K’s signing a new deal with the Suns and his comments in interviews suggests he’s enjoying the freedom and creativity of AFL much more than the rather humdrum world of NRL. When The Land impacts a couple of games and gets some confidence, he could be doing just the same.

Our short catalogue of weekend disappointments yesterday inexplicably failed to mention the video decision-assist farce on Saturday night.

This debacle highlighted problem after problem with this ill-considered, hastily-cobbled together system. Well, it is allegedly a system.

First problem: despite good co-operation and perfect positioning of the two umpires with primary responsibility for making the decision, the ‘video umpire’ chose to check their decision anyway. If this isn’t a poor-enough decision in the first place, the individual concerned must have known that the views he would be served were inherently inferior to those of the umpires on the spot.

Second problem: the decision of the best-positioned umpires was overturned despite the video ‘evidence’ being significantly short of conclusive. A system supposedly designed to improve accuracy actually overturned the correct decision on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Third problem: the decision to review was made just as the ball was about to be bounced to restart play after the goal had been awarded to the Barcodes. Had a behind been signalled, and been the wrong decision as was subsequently revealed, this review would never have happened.

Had there been cameras designed to cover the goal line between the behind post and goal post, there may have been a definitive view, but we didn’t have them. Channel Seven chose to showcase their technology, but apparently reckoned without ‘the fat bit’, as Dennis Cometti is fond of calling it, which obscured the goal line and the point of the football. The line between the goal posts was deemed worthy of coverage in the same plane, but no others.

Instead, this crock of a decision was made based on a camera shooting at an angle to the line with no point of reference and next to no context.

The genius who dreamed this ‘system’ and process up should be summarily dismissed. It’s gilt-edged crap. (Are you listening, Adrian?)

There is so much to come out of this weekend’s footy. Ugly rule-free ruck contests, a former AFL Rules Committee member whose acquaintance with the laws of the game is, to put it kindly, tenuous, umpiring interpretations that are at odds with the rest of the season, and two comebacks that leave AussieRulesBlog’s tipping credentials in tatters.

Darren Jolly is, allegedly, a great ruckman. We say ‘allegedly’ because in last night’s semi-final he was pitted against West Coast’s Dean Cox and Nic Naitanui. Jolly’s strategy seemed to be, in most cases, to blatantly hold his opponent in ruck wrestles. The umpires’ response, for the most part, seemed to be “both holding!”.

We’ve raised this issue before, and we loudly applauded the experimental pre-season rule that saw ruckmen banned from making contact before the ball had left an umpire’s hand. These ruck wrestles are ugly, ugly, ugly. By all means allow ruckmen to position their bodies to their own advantage, but flat out holding is an ugly blight.

Channel Seven’s Luke Darcy is a former member of the AFL’s Rules Committee — not that you’d know it from his comments on the telecast. Darcy may be a perfectly affable chap, but what he knows about the rules you could write on the back of a postage stamp in letters a metre high.

Once again, the umpires have brought out their ‘Special Edition’ rulebook which is locked away for the rest of the year. Under these special rules, incidents which would normally attract attention are simply ignored. In the Qualifying Final clash between Hawthorn and the Barcodes, Franklin was clearly held without the ball three or four times in the first quarter as Tarrant temporarily morphed into a bruising thug. In last night’s game, there were countless examples — for both sides, lest anyone accuse us of bias against the Barcodes — of players blatantly held without the ball. According to Luke Darcy, among others, it’s good that the umpires ‘throw away the rule book’ in finals football. However much we might agree or disagree about the ‘finals’ interpretation of rules, our expectation is that the rules are the same from the first bounce of pre-season to the final siren of the Grand Final. Anything else is ludicrous.

Finally, AussieRulesBlog was pretty confident that the Dockers and Eagles would prevail. It seems we reckoned without the travel factor since both teams faded dramatically after lightning quick starts. It’s a fair bet the opposite would have happened if both games were in Perth, but one wonders why two of the teams who travel most often and the longest distances continue to be so clearly affected by the travel.

Brett Ratten must now realise that the Blues’ unexpected loss to the Gold Coast Suns was not the signal for his demise at Princes Park. The very speed with which his replacement has been accomplished suggests that the deal with Malthouse was in place, at least in principle if not in fact, for a considerable period.

For other recently ‘replaced’ coaches, the situation has seemed less . . . organised. Dean Bailey comes to mind. Perhaps Matthew Primus.

There was certainly the same whiff of conspiracy around Matthew Knights’ demise at Essendon.

Does it matter? Some of us continue to believe that a contract is to be honoured. Not paid out, but honoured.

In the end, the question for those involved comes down to ends and means. Do the ends justify the means? And can you sleep with your conscience?

Another point we noted from the final quarter of the Swans-Adelaide Qualifying Final replay was the indecent rush to the exits by an extraordinary proportion of the Crows ‘faithful’ once it became clear the Crows would not win.

It happens to be the Crows this time, but the same can be pointed out of all supporter groups.

AussieRulesBlog is firmly of the opinion that true supporters stay on right to the final siren. It’s easy when your favourite team is handing out a shellacing. It’s easy when the finish is neck and neck and the excitement is pulsating. And it’s hard to sit through your team copping a hiding, but true supporters see it as their duty to do so.

We hate hearing the opposition’s song blaring from the PA, especially when our boys have copped a whipping, but the players can’t pack up their gear and leave at the ten-minute mark because they’re being thrashed. They have to stay. And AussieRulesBlog thinks it’s every supporter’s duty to back their team siren to siren. Be packed and ready to leave the moment you hear that final siren, by all means. But not before. That’s our role in the team and the club.

Teamwork is everything. Be a faithful supporter, not a faith-less one.

AussieRulesBlog has been getting an early start on the off-season by watching replays of all the matches from week one of the finals. We’re just watching the final quarter of the Swans-Adelaide game and noticed Crow Patrick Dangerfield reeling from a blow to the head after an attempted smother by Swan Jude Bolton.

In commentary, Premiership Captain Tom Harley says Bolton has nothing to worry about because the high contact to Dangerfield wasn’t malicious. The MRP agrees, noting on the AFL’s MRP results web page:

“It was the view of the panel that Bolton’s action to brace for contact was not a striking motion [and therefore] no further action was taken.”

We have one serious question for the MRP. Is the head sacrosanct or not?

Pretty much everyone who follows AFL footy agreed that Jack Ziebell’s contact with Aaron Joseph wasn’t malicious and had occurred incidentally to both players attempting to take possession of the ball. Nevertheless, the MRP saw fit to charge and suspend Ziebell for that incidental contact. The justification for this nonsense decision was, among other things, the AFL canard that the player’s head must be protected.

And yet Jude Bolton’s contact that left Dangerfield dazed is apparently OK because it didn’t look like a strike.

We are dazed too. Dazed and confused. Once again, the MRP’s logic emanates from a parallel universe.

For AussieRulesBlog, last night’s Qualifying Final between Hawthorn and the Barcodes brought one question into sharp focus.

Although we were only seeing the game on television — which robs the spectator of almost all context — it seemed pretty clear that the Barcodes’ primary objective was to upset Lance Franklin, and they weren’t too fussed about how they achieved that objective.

Seeing two or three Barcodes virtually physically assaulting Franklin before the opening bounce and then more physical attention at every opportunity for the rest of the first half, it was clear that these actions were premeditated.

We regard ourselves as having a fairly modern and up-to-date outlook, notwithstanding the date on our birth certificate, but in football terms we’re firmly ancient. The end most definitely does not justify the means.

The question? We’re interested to hear from readers. How far is too far? How far over the line do you want your team to go in pursuit of a victory? Does sportsmanship — respect for one’s opponent — figure at all any more?

For the record, despite not having any affection for the Hawks, we mightily enjoyed watching the Barcodes reap the results of their, to us, unsportsmanlike approach.

It’s a hardy perennial. No amount of ‘herbicide’ can kill it. When the calendar clicks around to September, you can be sure it’ll pop its old and wizened head up, just it like it did last year and the fifty or so years before that. It’s the yearly whinge of some President or other that their members are being diddled out of finals seats by the AFL’s seat allocation policies.

This year, getting an early start before the Grand Final is even a twinkle in anyone’s eye, it’s Barcode President Eddie “Everywhere” McGuire.

Give Eddie his due though. This year he’s come up with a rather novel stance. The AFL are trying to steal Barcode members apparently.

AussieRulesBlog will out ourselves as a paid up AFL Member. Silver in our case, and firmly an Essendon Club Support package. It’s a carryover from the Waverly days and came into its own for us when the Bombers relocated their home games from Windy Hill to the MCG. Now that the Dons play indoor footy at home, we’re seeing less value, but we keep it going anyway.

If you support one of the big clubs that call the G home and you’re not an AFL member, you’re a mug. More especially so if you occasionally like to pop along and watch teams other than your own go around.

According to McGuire, the AFL are trying to aggregate all club members into AFL membership. How? Well, the AFL allow AFL members to buy a limited number of Guest Passes — 1000 at $75 a pop, adult tickets elsewhere in the stadium range from $46 to $85 — for this Friday night’s game.

As is usual, many supporters find themselves unable to access tickets to the game. The AFL sells tickets to its members plus some guest passes, so therefore the AFL is the big, bad bogeyman.

This is getting boring in the extreme. A big club makes it to a final and some supporters who’d like to be able to go can’t get a ticket. Shock, Horror!Short of building a stadium with infinite capacity, there’s not a solution. The next obvious target is the MCC Members.

We’ll tell you what, Eddie. You could donate the tickets that you and your board and your sponsors are using and allow the poor downtrodden fans you pretend to be so concerned about to buy them . . .

For goodness sake! The hyperbole being uttered in the wake of the Steve Johnson suspension is almost beyond belief.

Geelong Premiership player, James Kelly, apparently opened his mouth and the following drivel issued forth:

"These days it is getting harder and harder to be an AFL footballer and especially out on the ground, with so much happening and so many decisions you have got to make in such a short space of time," Kelly said.

"It's getting really, really hard to know what you can and can't do."

No it’s not. Not hard at all. You can’t shirtfront an opponent thirty metres off the ball. It’s against the Laws of Australian Football. Has been for as long as you’ve been playing the game at any level, James.

Perhaps young James and his AFL playing colleagues could devote some time to reading the laws of the game over the off-season? Then he’d be less likely to get his tongue dirty by putting his boot firmly in his mouth.

Even the contentious and controversial holding the ball rule looks pretty straightforward when you read it. Getting hold of the copy of the laws that The Giesch and his chums use is pretty difficult as it’s always in revision, but the basics remain relatively straightforward and playing to them gives the Giesch’s boys less room for extemporising.

Still, we do feel for James. It must be simply awful collecting a few hundred ‘k’ a year and being expected to know the laws of the game as well.

If media reports turn out to be correct and Carlton and Mick Malthouse agree terms and sign a contract within days of the conclusion of the home and away rounds, Malthouse’s insistence that he hadn’t spoken with Carlton up until Ratten’s sacking looks disingenuous at best.

As with the Hird and Thompson ascendency at Essendon two years ago, the timing and the seeming inevitability of the end result make so much smoke that there can only be a raging fire at its centre.

It matters not whether it was Malthouse’s management or he who dealt with Carlton. For all practical intents and purposes, they’re one and the same and if that distinction is the basis for Malthouse’s denials, then he’s worthy to argue angels and pin heads with the finest Christian scholars of the 5th Century.

The half-truths, if that’s what they turn out to be, didn’t kill the story — if that’s what was intended. A flat “No comment.” wouldn’t have killed the story either, but it also wouldn’t play us all for mugs.

Martin Blake writes in today’s Age under the extraordinary headline

Johnson decision an example of the nanny state:

It is such a contradiction to think that a little shoulder into the sternum of an approaching player, intended as a block for that player's opponent (in this case, the passing Joel Selwood), can draw a suspension from a final when there is so much more overtly dangerous conduct going on around it.

You’ve got this one wrong, Martin, on at least two counts. A “little shoulder into the sternum” it isn’t and it’s in full and clear breach of the Laws of Australian Football and has been since God’s dog was a pup.

Law 15.4.2 Shepherd states:

A Shepherd is using the body or arm to push, bump or block:
    (a)    a Player who does not have possession of the football 
and who is no further than 5 metres away from the 
football at the time when the push, bump or block occurs;

Beyond anything else, it’s clear from the lines in the image that the ball is at least twenty-five metres away. Rule 15.4.5 specifies a free kick for infringing the shepherding rule, but when force is taken into account, there’s no question that Johnson is applying more than a shepherd or a block. He’s doing his best to take out the guy tagging his Captain.

Thirty years ago a “shirtfront” to an opponent was accepted as a legitimate tactic, but most of us have moved on. And a shirtfront most definitely is not a bump — it’s a weapon used to put an opponent out of the game.

Now, the perfect example of the “nanny state” decision was the ruling against Joel Selwood a few weeks ago when he pushed his brother after surviving a heavy tackle.

Johnson is a wizard with the ball and it would generally be better that he played than sat outside the arena, but equally there’s no room in the modern game for snipers.

AussieRulesBlog would have no issue with a shepherd or a stationary block within five metres of the ball, but this was a shirtfront twenty-five metres off the ball. At the very least, it’s unsportsmanlike conduct and, in our view, that makes the charge and the suspension appropriate.