Weekend disappointments

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.