Barcodes ruckman Darren Jolley’s blast at the AFL’s mooted ‘two and two’ interchange, being trialled in this year’s pre-season, as “stupid” and “ridiculous” is itself pretty stupid and ridiculous.

While AussieRulesBlog acknowledges that the game was different, lets remember that prior to 1978 and the introduction of interchange players were expected to be able to play 120 minutes of football — in more-or-less continuous 30-minute chunks. The game’s rhythm was dictated by the players’ fitness level.

Over time, as coaches have sought more and more advantage from interchanges, we reached a point where a player like Dane Swan is interchanged continually throughout the course of the game, often only for 30 seconds or so. In turn, the modern game’s rhythm has attuned to continual interchange and the consequent higher performance levels.

Jolley’s comments, and the concerns voiced last pre-season by Bombers captain Jobe Watson, seem to be based on the assumption that the game will remain the same in every other respect other than interchanges. Commonsense dictates that an adjustment like restricting interchanges will, in turn, require consequent changes in the rhythm of the game, players’ fitness and endurance and game strategies. The game will evolve to cope with changed circumstances.

More to the point, rarely does the game evolve so quickly that the acme of overall performance is delivered the year after a change is implemented. It requires coaches and strategists searching for advantage and trying new ideas to unearth the most effective responses — the responses that stand up over time against the pressure of opponents’ strategies.

There are probably as many people suggesting the current frenetic pace of the game begets more injuries as there are those suggesting a two-and-two bench will generate more injuries due to greater fatigue. We won’t know how it will play out until we get to the future.

It seems it happens once a month or so. A team cops a couple of early injuries, is forced to deploy their substitute earlier than anticipated and loses a rotation. Yesterday at the ’G, it was the Bombers’ turn.

What’s really the most depressing aspect of this is the media machinations around it.

Coaches will be asked, quite legitimately in our view, how the injuries affected the team’s performance. The coaches, of course denying that injuries made the difference, go on to wistfully dream about a larger interchange bench and highlight injured players remaining on the field for lack of a rotation. James Hird, quite tongue-in-cheek, yesterday drew a contrast with basketball where the bench is a full one-for-one ratio. [Ed: Yeah, an eighteen-man bench! That’s really gonna fly, Jim.] That comment then becomes a headline claiming the coach has slammed the 2011 interchange arrangements.

Come on, people! This handwringing about reduced rotations is more about fairness than it’s about player welfare. AussieRulesBlog has a newsflash! The game isn’t fair! We have an oval ball with unpredictable bounce and flight. Ask Stephen Milne how fair the game is — one bounce away from a Premiership.

We haven’t done any research, but injuries and a reduced interchange manifestly influencing results in about one game a month doesn’t sound too out of the ordinary. That’s a rate of less than 4%.

Hird’s Bombers would still have been disadvantaged with a four-man interchange. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, a team collects more than its share of injuries. Sometimes they’re at training, sometimes they’re during a game.

Let’s all just get over it. Teams have been finishing games with injured players forced to remain on the ground since God’s dog was a pup.

Well, AussieRulesBlog is wrong again!

Back in January, we predicted that interchange rates would increase with the reduction to three interchange seats for 2011. That is, we thought the total number of interchanges would be down, but the number of interchanges per interchange seat would be up.

How could we have got it so wrong?

In fact, Essendon and four other teams managed more interchange rotations in round one of 2011 than their 2010 interchange rotation average. In the Bombers’ case, their 134 interchanges eclipsed even their highest number of interchanges for any 2010 game: 122.

The AFL’s own announcement of the change to the composition of the bench cited a desire to curb the increasing interchange numbers. Well, it’s been an outstanding success at that, don’t you think, Adrian? No less than five teams beat their 2010 average with one fewer interchange player available in round one of 2011.

Kevin Bartlett’s Rules of the Game committee was offered three alternatives:

• three interchange players and one subtitute
• two interchange players and two substitutes
• four interchange players, with a cap of 80 interchanges per game

Now we freely concede that a team losing a player to injury is less disadvantaged through the 3:1 rule than they would have been under an unrestricted 4-man interchange. But we can’t see how that disadvantage is not also countered by the cap option, which mandates a reduction in interchange rotations.

Clearly the Committee erred in its recommendation of option one by favouring the fairness criterion over the rest. The numbers from round one prove the error. Unless the Bombers suffer a sudden rash of injuries attributable to high interchange rates — such as multiple bum splinters from jumping on and off ‘the pine’ — it’s pretty obvious that the twelve coaches who didn’t maximise their rotations in round one are going to be following the Bombers’ and the Barcodes’ leads, and then the rule will be seen to be a total crock.

We heard Brad Scott on AFL Insider on FoxSports suggest that the AFL leave the game alone for two or three years and just see how it evolves to deal with this current set of rules before making changes with unforeseen consequences. Hear hear, Brad!

As the 2011 season is almost upon us, the footy press is full of articles about the new bench arrangements with three interchange and one substitute player. It will be a big change for clubs to come to grips with, but it’s not all that new.

The concerns seem to be focused on coaches being forced to send injured players back onto the field. In truth, it’s not all that different to the current situation — get four injuries and you lose flexibility to rest players and the next injury means either playing a man short or playing an injured player.

The real learning curve is going to come in deciding which player to nominate as the substitute and, more importantly, when to make the substitution.

It wasn’t until 1930 that there were bench players of any description in the VFL. That year saw the first use of a “19th man”. This was a true substitution: one player off, and not able to return, one player on.

In 1946 a second ‘reserve’ player was introduced, the “20th man”. It was not uncommon for reserve players to sit out an entire game, although the two reserves generally got a run toward the end of the last quarter.

Interchanges weren’t permitted until 1978, so VFL coaches had plenty of experience in husbanding their resources up until that point. As we know, interchange developed to the point where there was virtually one change per minute in 2010.

So, is this new format for the interchange bench a disaster? Hardly. Will it tax coaches tactically? Yes. Was it the best option available for slowing the game and reducing interchange rates? In our opinion, not even close. A cap would have done the same job with much less complexity. Still, it wouldn’t be the AFL if they took the most logical option, would it?