AFL makes right call on rucks

Hooray! It’s not often that AussieRulesBlog is in almost complete sync with the AFL, but we are today.

 

First and foremost we’ll see an end to the ugly blight of ruck wrestling. Making the rule trialled during the 2012 pre-season a permanent feature, ruckmen will no longer be able to make contact with each other before the ball has left the umpire’s hands.

 

 

AussieRulesBlog has a real problem with anyone who thinks the above scene is either attractive or within the other rules of the game. If Mike Pyke and David Hale aren’t holding each other in this image, then AussieRulesBlog should be watching the Melbourne ‘Victory’.

 

We’re not concerned that inability to wrestle for five minutes before the ball is back into play will somehow advantage ruckmen like Nic Naitanui. For all of a couple of weeks it might, and then the competition’s strategists will figure out a way to limit Naitanui’s effectiveness.

 

Even supposed ‘dinosaurs’ like Shane Mumford and Darren Jolley will manage. How often have either conceded an easy contest at a centre bounce in the past couple of years? No contact beforehand there, and both Mumford and Jolley have somehow contrived to deliver the ball to their midfielders pretty effectively.

 

We’re also in the mood to applaud the game’s custodians on their other rule changes, although we’re sad to see the relegation of the umpire’s bounce to a largely ceremonial role. It’s the beginning of the end for the bounce. In five years, it’ll be a curiosity.

 

Laying on tackled players and pulling the ball in beneath an opponent have been highly unattractive features of the game for too long. We’re not totally convinced about forceful contact beneath the knees, but we acknowledge the danger it poses.

 

Of course, there’s often quite a distance between our expectations of how a new rule will influence the game and how The Giesch’s mob implement that rule. that will be the test and we’ll reserve absolute applause until we see the rules in action.

 

Interchange cap
Unfortunately, there’s been a lack of will to implement an interchange cap. Long-time readers will recall that AussieRulesBlog wrote passionately of the benefits of a cap over a substitute. And, largely, our fears have been realised. There’s not that big a difference between rotation numbers in 2012 and what they were before the substitute. Entirely predictable — and we predicted it!

 

Surprising no-one, Barcodes chief cook and bottle washer, Eddie Everywhere, decided to wheel out the super hyperbole and suggested AFL players will be blood doping within weeks.

 

We’re not sure what Eddie has been sniffing, but we want some! The facts are that the game has become quicker because of unfettered interchange. Yes, players have become fitter, but their running capacity has been significantly enhanced by having more short rests. Some of Dane Swan’s visits to the pine last only thirty seconds.

 

It’s only logical that reducing interchanges — which the three-and-one bench was supposed to do and patently failed to achieve — will reduce players’ running capacity. They could dope, and thanks for that helpful suggestion, Eddie, or they could simply pace themselves more so they have some petrol tickets left for the last ten minutes.

 

Eddie and those who think like him are locked into maintaining the game exactly as it is played at the conclusion of 2012. There’s no law or logic that says that must be the case!

 

If players can’t rest as often, they’ll have to ration out their effort across their game time. It’s not hard to figure out. And we would likely see a reduction in soft tissue and collision injury to boot.

 

AussieRulesBlog waits with bated breath for the 2014 rule changes.