Much consternation about AFL scheduling this week. Rohan Connolly has picked up on scheduling as one reason for clearly lower attendances, but the AFL has a hospital handball cocked ready to avoid being caught holding the ball.

AussieRulesBlog was posting about critics of a 30-minute delayed broadcast back in 2009 and it has been a couple of years now that we’ve had wall-to-wall live football.

Not so long ago, live broadcast was THE biggest issue in AFL football. So many people HAD TO HAVE the game broadcast live, because they couldn’t avoid a news source for two and a half hours.

Given that the game takes around 2.5 hours to get started and then play itself out, there are limited slots available so that all games will be broadcast live to air.

THAT’s why we have games scheduled at 7.10pm on Sunday nights — that and the power of particular clubs to pull a primetime TV audience.

The hospital handball? Vlad will say the AFL have only done what the fans demanded.

Who’s the luckiest player in the AFL this week? Probably the Blues’ Jarrad Waite.

If you don’t have Foxtel’s Comedy Channel and you haven’t had a laugh for a while, check out Waite’s Oscar-worthy performance from last Thursday night.

Click the image to view the video. Scroll forward to about 2:50 for the big show.

Why is he lucky? Well, young Jarrad has form. AussieRulesBlog outed him for a very similar incident back in 2010.

A bit of a one-trick pony, is Jarrad. It’s a pity for the Blues that the trick isn’t playing consistent footy.

The first quarter of last year’s season opener was a heart-pumping, hard-running goalfest. Last night’s 2014 season opener began in gripping style, but wasn’t a goalfest in any sense. The Barcodes and the Dockers armwrestled for 30 minutes before the Barcode defence burst asunder like a dam wall and the Docker goals flowed freely.

Over recent years we’ve become accustomed to a Blues-Tiggers opener, and these too have mostly failed to live up to the hype.

After a five-month hiatus, it’s unsurprising that our expectations get ahead of reality. But 2014 has had an extra dimension with the pre-season “challenge” offering few clues as to which teams are up and running and which are foxing.

After game one, one thing is certain. The Dockers are looking ominous.

For the Barcodes, on the other hand, it’s a hard ask to believe that Didak, Thomas, Shaw and Jolley would have kept the dam wall in one piece. Reid and putative Barcode-debutant White wouldn’t have made the difference either.

And it’s clear the Barcode faithful don’t have Foxtel, because they were incensed that the umpires weren’t umpiring to the 2013 “Gieschen” interpretations. The trend begun in the pre-season, with umpires umpiring games as though they are Grand Finals, continued into game one of the home and away rounds.

What a refreshing change to enjoy the football rather than rant and rave about over-zealous umpires!

Starved of genuinely competitive football, AussieRulesBlog has been watching round one of the NRL's 2014  season.

Craig Bellamy is a genius and Cam Smith should be awarded the keys to the city of Melbourne.

The thing that had struck us is the number of video reviews. Apparently there have been rule changes for 2014 designed to speed up the game. Sadly for RL aficionados, whatever benefits may have accrued from the rule changes, the unwillingness of the referees to make a decision on tries means that the game is developing a stop-start nature that no-one can think is good.

There's a lesson here for Mark Evans, the AFL's football operations boss. The crowd and the television audience are fed up with interminable video reviews. We want the officials to make a decision. That's what they're paid to do.

AussieRulesBlog is seeking expressions of interest from suitably equipped entrepreneurs for the secure carriage of mountains of cash to the live AFL games we attend in 2014. We attended our first game of the season this week at the Docklands Stadium and received our usual early-season shock at the “catering” outlet.

The indignity of paying for the equivalent of liquid gold dispensed in plastic cups was reinforced when we sought something to sate our hunger. $5.60 for an “Angus” pie! We can purchase FOUR of these same pies at the online supermarket for $8.27.

How is it that an organisation buying in bulk — the AFL’s “caterers” — can add 170% to the price of the same product in an online supermarket? We assume the online supermarkets aren’t retailing at cost, so there’s already a significant markup built into their pricing structure.

Our companion fared even worse, parting with a princely $9 for an indifferent sandwich that had spent half a lifetime in its packaging.

We’ve already scheduled an appointment with the bank manager to arrange overdraft facilities for our next visit.

Not content with fleecing us for food and beverages, venue management chose to play the game in semi-darkness, with the goals at each end a nightmare of half-shadows — and that’s just for spectators!

Doing their bit for non-existent anthropogenic climate change, no doubt.

Oh, the football? No great heights, but it was a practice match after all.