As a season that has been traumatic for a Bombers fan draws to a close, AussieRulesBlog maintained our recent policy of tuning in to the Brownlow Medal count once around mid-way, and then again at the conclusion.

We joined midway through the round 23 count, just in time to see Dane Swan, and then Joel Selwood, relegated to the minor placings when the last best-on-ground vote of the season was awarded to Gary Ablett.

A quick glance at the results for round 23 shows that the Barcodes played the Kangaroos on Sunday afternoon in the second-last game of the home and away rounds. But this was the third-last game read out by Vlad and Dane Swan was eliminated as a winning chance.

Geelong played the Lions in the third game of the round, on Saturday afternoon, but Vlad read these votes out second-last. Selwood retained a two-vote lead over Ablett at this point.

The Suns played the Giants in the third-last game of the round, early Sunday afternoon, but these were the last votes read out. Ablett, with a best-on-ground, is awarded the Brownlow Medal by a margin of one vote.

There’s no doubt this was great theatre, but there are some troubling aspects.

Traditionally, Brownlow Medal votes were cast by the umpires and the sealed envelopes stored under security until the night of the count. The votes were read out in the order they were cast. Had this practice been followed, Ablett would have been the winner after the votes for the second last game — Barcodes v Kangaroos — were read out.

For the AFL to know to read out the votes in the order they did — and with Vlad’s pathetic impression of commercial television’s tension-building pause — one of two things had to happen.

The first, and most troubling, possibility is that all the votes had been tallied in full before the televised count. Call us conspiracy theorists — and we’ve got plenty of evidence from this year — but this scenario allows the possibility for the voting and the count to be altered to suit the AFL’s agenda.

The second possibility is that someone has done a very fast scan of the votes in the break between the last and second-last rounds and determined the order of games for maximum theatrical effect. Not as troubling, but too much theatre and not enough tradition and (relative) transparency.

It’s an important award. Too important to be sullied by a confected count.

AussieRulesBlog ventured to the MCG last night to take in the spectacular Preliminary Final clash between the Hawks and the Cats. It was a wonderful game, not even spoiled by the screaming banshees sitting behind us who maintained a manic cheering for the Hawks from first bounce to last. At least whoever has the misfortune to live with them won’t be listening to them today — there’s no way they’d be able to raise even a whisper after last night’s effort.

As a disinterested observer, we noticed two video review incidents that showed the potential for a properly-implemented system and a mis-use of the system as blatant as we can remember.

First to the good. The ball flew goalward and a defender leapt and tapped the ball at full stretch. It was a heroic effort, but the goal line camera clearly showed the ball had completely crossed the line before being touched. This is how the system works when it is properly resourced.

Now, unfortunately, to the bad. It will seem strange that we say this video review did enable the correct decision to be made. A ball popped off a boot in a contest near the boundary line and was signalled out of bounds on the full by the boundary umpire. Correct. But then we went to a video review! Incorrect!

When this half-baked system was introduced, the departed and unlamented Adrian Anderson told us it was a goal line video review system. Never mind that it was improperly resourced for the task. The Giesch’s mob have happily called for its use for all sorts of things since. Was a ball touched off the boot, was a ball correctly kicked by foot or did it roll off a knee or thigh, and so on.

Through the AFL, we in the football community pay umpires to be sharp-eyed and observant and to make decisions based on what they see. AussieRulesBlog can understand there will be times when the umpire is unsure, and where there’s a fixed and definite parameter — such as a the goal line — there are opportunities to use technology to assist.

But we remain of the opinion, reinforced by the experience of video review thus far in AFL, that reviews should only be called upon where the goal umpire is seriously unsighted or countermanded by another official. Let our umpires do the work for which they’re paid. We’re pretty sure they’re not keen on cherry-picking just the easy decisions, and the football community has to have faith that they are doing the job impartially and to the highest standard.

AussieRulesBlog was surprised this morning to see a teaser on The Age's online homepage for a report on Sean Wellman leaving Essendon .

Despite the report not mentioning supplements or syringes, it seems The Age has assigned the Bombers a new logo.

On face value, the processes announced for the structuring of the 2014 AFL fixture look to have considerable merit.

We don’t think there’s any doubt that players will benefit from an extra bye during a long season.

Similarly, we think the notion of weighting the fixture according to finishing position in the previous season makes sense.

Of course, the first game that will come up for discussion is the now-traditional Anzac Day game between Essendon and the Barcodes.

As the weighting proposal suggests, the days of fixturing predominantly for so-called “blockbuster” games is well past it’s use-by date. There’s certainly a case to be made for other teams to share in the Anzac Day experience, but there are few potential fixtures that would see a virtually guaranteed 80,000-plus crowd at the ‘G’, hushed through the minute’s silence.

AussieRulesBlog isn’t sad to see the end of the pre-season competition, which had become all-but meaningless. Simple practice matches will suffice nicely, thank you.

In a recent post about the tough year endured by Essendon and its supporters, we provided a link to an article by Mick Ellis on SEN’s Inside Football Extra. Is anyone cheering for the truth looked at the hysterical reactions of some sections of the media and introduced the psychological concept of conformational bias.

Ellis has been worrying his computer keyboard again and has penned a new piece, AFL’s mystery bus tour rolls through Essendon, where he shares some fascinating ideas about the drawn out saga that was the 2013 Essendon supplements affair.

[Spoiler alert] Ellis makes out a compelling case that the AFL’s game plan, including the charges against the four individuals, was designed to avoid infraction notices against Essendon players, an eventuality he describes as potentially catastrophic. [/end spoiler alert]

In other posts, AussieRulesBlog has asked why players being “jabbed up” with local anaesthetic to get through a game isn’t considered performance enhancing. Ellis asks another question about this practice following on from questions asked about the Bombers’ supplements program, namely: “How about multiple pain-killing or anti-inflammatory jabs to get players on the field for big games? Do we understand the long-term health effects of that practice?” We’re not consuming much footy media at present, but we suspect no-one else is considering these questions.

Perhaps we do something about the long-term effects, at least to the extent that former players report arthritic joints.

Ellis, as a Barcodes supporter, is no natural friend to Essendon, though he is prepared to park his prejudices at the door before beginning to write. Would that some of his mainstream media colleagues could try to emulate him.

AussieRulesBlog recommends these articles heartily to anyone prepared to consider the issue dispassionately.

The AFL has announced a cap on interchange rotations of 120 for the 2014 and 2015 seasons, with changes at quarter and half-time breaks not counted toward the cap. The interchange bench will remain as three interchange and one substitute.

While we applaud the introduction of a cap, setting the level at 120 is like tying up a frisky 2-year-old colt with a strand of overcooked spaghetti. The AFL’s own statement reports the average for games in 2012 and early 2013 at “approximately 130 per game.” So the reduction is about eight interchanges per game. Wow!

There was so much angst about interchange numbers back in 2009 when these limits were first mooted through a trial in the preseason competition, although the number then was a hefty 50 fewer interchanges with a cap of 80 and a per quarter limit of 20.

After suffering two years of indecision, we were foisted with the nonsense substitute system (with three uncapped interchanges) which apparently was fairer. Well, fairer as long as you don’t lose a player early. While you don’t lose the potential for interchange rotations, you do lose the impact of a fresh player entering the ground late in the game and we’ve seen many occasions where that influence has been crucial to a victory.

It won’t happen now — we’ve got the substitutes for a considerable time it seems — but a simple capped interchange offers a far fairer result in the event of early injury.

Under a capped interchange, coaches must carefully judge their use of interchange early, husbanding resources for a crucial time later in the game. Losing a player may marginally reduce the length of time some players spend off the field, but the number of interchanges for both teams remains constant, virtually eliminating the disadvantage of losing a player*. The team that is profligate with its interchanges early, will suffer late, regardless of having a one-player advantage

The substitute system fixed a problem that didn’t exist and introduced a needless complexity to our game — another victory of Adrian Anderson over commonsense.

* Of course, losing a star playmaker will hurt more than losing a journeyman, but this is an argument about quantitative rather than qualitative analysis.