Today’s breathless announcement that James Hird has ‘done a u-turn on coaching’ is disingenuous at best.

Hird had made a number of guarded responses to extraordinarily direct questioning over his coaching aspirations. At no stage did he announce he was available to coach Essendon in 2011, yet the lead of a Caroline Wilson piece in The Age this morning scurrilously suggests that was the case.

Hird had been asked, somewhat provocatively, to make specific comments about his coaching ambitions. As is common in these situations, his responses were general in nature and sought to give him some wriggle room without putting his hand up as a coaching aspirant in the immediate future.

The only place where there has been any misunderstanding has been in the fevered imaginations of ‘journalists’ like Ms Wilson.

Not for the first time, the media’s desire for controversy and a one-on-one ‘battle’ between two high-profile people has outweighed any adherence to journalistic principles.

Once again mainstream media have demonstrated their willingness to pursue a story until it fits their needs.  The hounding of James Hird with questions designed to force him into making a controversial statement, and therefore breathing new life into speculation over the future of Matthew Knights, has been scandalous.

Aussierulesblog has generally refrained from commenting on issues uniquely affecting the Bombers.  We prefer to think of ourselves as football fans first and foremost, with a strong affection for the Bombers.  However we find the controversy emerging over the last few days requires a note of sanity.

When Matthew Knights was appointed, we were mightily unimpressed.  Our assessment of his attributes as a player did not suggest he could be an outstanding coach.  His limited coaching resume did nothing to soothe our fears.  Time, however, has forced us to re-evaluate that assessment.

The last three or four years of the Sheedy ascendancy were pretty dismal times for Bombers fans who had become used to success and regular final series appearances.

Under Knights, the Bombers played a new and exciting brand of run and carry football.  When this gameplan worked, it was breathtakingly successful.  When it didn't, the team looked second rate.  Some famous successes, including consecutive victories against the hated Blues, seduced some supporters into believing that the team’s glory days had returned.

Toward the end of Sheedy’s time, the club had taken a fairly short term view in its recruiting decisions.  This policy doomed Knights to suffer the loss of much of the team’s experience and forced him, whether he wanted or not, into a rebuilding phase.

Statistics show that Knights’ record over his three years is superior to Sheedy’s over his last three years.

Nevertheless, the Sheedy supporters would not be swayed from the view that their icon had been unfairly removed and held Knights responsible.  There also emerged a rump of supporters attached to the myth that Essendon did not accept mediocre performances.  For this group, anything less than a resounding victory was unacceptable.  These two groups, both with unrealistic expectations, provided a veil of legitimacy for media speculation over Knights’ future.

Aussierulesblog wishes to go on record as a Knights supporter.  Without the benefit of hindsight, we considered that the Essendon board had got the timing and the decision on Sheedy right.  With hindsight, perhaps he was given a couple more years than were deserved.

The argument can easily be mounted that Knights has not been done any favours by circumstances over the past three years.  To mention just one, the loss of Gumbleton to debilitating injury for more than two years severely limited the development of a new forward line.

Convincing victories over acknowledged premiership contenders in both of the last two years suggest that Essendon and Knights have got it pretty right.

The assumption, implicit in the media's pursuit of Hird, that a gifted player will automatically be a successful coach at the elite level is not supported by history.  Of premiership coaches over the last 50 years, only Coleman, Blight, Jesaulenko and Roos would have been considered gifted as players.  So, a mere six of the last 49 premierships have been presided over by coaches who were gifted players.

Sentimentally, the notion that Hird could return and lead the club to a premiership is attractive.  Whether it is realistic and whether it justifies removing an incumbent whose record is not all that poor is quite another question. 

We just realised this morning that the football version of the human headline is no longer newsworthy! Aside from the right-wing rednecks listening to MTR, no-one has heard from Akermanis for a couple of weeks. Removing his listing with an AFL team removes his ability to generate controversy that will be reported in the mainstream media. A pity it took so long to happen.

Ed: Does Aker read AussieRulesBlog? Just when we mention the blessed silence, up he bobs with another ‘boot-in-mouth’ contender.

Jeff Gieschen really is a dim bulb. Talk, rather than a better-positioned (additional) goal umpire will solve problems with incorrect goal umpire adjudications, according to Gieschen. This man’s grip on reality is tenuous at best.

The Giesch must go!

Does the very existence of Rules of the Game Committee almost require them to propose changes? There seem to be few, if any, compelling reasons for most of the changes proposed this week.

We suggested at the time of the Riewoldt and Kerr hamstrings that there would be an impetus for revision of interchange provisions in  the wake of those injuries. Prescient again!

Without access to data, it’s hard to comment on how current interchange rules may or may not contribute to injuries, although it is crystal clear that teams losing players, in the first half particularly, are significantly disadvantaged as a result.

Another consideration is the extent to which current interchange practices have advantaged some players. We wonder, for instance, whether Dane Swan would have risen to such prominence without constant interchange?

Our preference is for a cap that takes the game back a couple of years. Eighty seems to AussieRulesBlog to be a reasonable number. Then let coaches use them as they will. A cap reduces the impact of losing players substantially, while allowing coaches flexibility.

In terms of game length, there were changes to how time-on was applied in about 2006, when quarters were reduced from twenty-five minutes to twenty. Clearly the effect of the changes to time-on was too great. Why can we not just wind back that part of the 2006 change? Instead, the Committee proposes to play with the length of quarters again! This is, frankly, the most ill-considered of the proposals.

AussieRulesBlog has already identified a number of problems with advantage rule application. We can’t see how the inequities are undone by allowing players to initiate advantage. Players must still make an assumption about the foregoing free kick, leading, as sure as spring follows winter, to a spate of dodgy 50-metre penalties. Another nonsense proposal. the whole advantage situation needs to be rethought rather than tinkered with.

We are very unsure about empowering boundary umpires to pay free kicks. The game is inconsistent enough as it is with three separate interpretations on the field already: why would we add another four interpretations?

We are pretty comfortable with free kicking the player who drags the ball under an opponent in an attempt to get a free kick. Big tick for this one!

We are also quite comfortable with the onus of responsibility for high contact in shepherding to be with the shepherder. Another tick!

Frankly, the proposed changes to the scoring system seem to be a spoiler to take some heat off the more contentious of the other proposals. This one is complete and utter nonsense.

Finally, AussieRulesBlog asks why the committee did not seek to deal with the biggest single blight on the game at the present moment — the 50-metre penalty.

Watching last night’s Essendon-Carlton game on TV rather than live, courtesy of a broken arm sustained on Thursday, we were staggered at the degree of over-umpiring employed. True, the Giesch’s chief zealot, Steve McBurney was front and centre, but his colleagues on the night participated equally in the orgy of tiggy touchwood frees and overly-technical 50-metre penalties, to the detriment of the game.

Were these same umpiring attitudes to be displayed for the seven remaining games of the round, we would be less concerned, but we’d wager a considerable sum against that possibility. As for seeing them next week, well there’s more chance of a thylacine romping down Collins Street on Monday morning.

All that the game needs is consistency of approach and consistency of application. The only thing we get from The Giesch and his mob consistently is damnable inconsistency.

The Giesch must go!!!!

ps: Carlton were the better team on the night courtesy of better finishing. The umpiring, while deplorable, did not contribute materially to Essendon’s performance.

We have to wonder about the AFL. Not so long ago, they bent every effort to make the game faster and more continuous, most particularly with immediate kick-ins after behinds. Now, we’re told, the game is running too long.

Mark Stevens, in the Hun, even makes the extraordinary inference that fans might find a game of kick-to-kick fits into their schedules better — “… other sports are looking at shortened formats to keep fans interested, with cricket’s most popular form now Twenty20.” Seriously, is two and a half hours too long for the modern fan to concentrate?

“The real driver is the fans,” says Adrian Anderson. Well, Ando, old mate, what about undoing the immediate kick-in for  start? There’s a way to give players a rest during the game! Some of we fans could do with that rest too!

We’ve not finished groaning about the missed shot for goal when the ball is being rushed at breakneck speed through the opposition half-forward line, with our players haring back in desperate pursuit. We could do with a bit less of that.

But at a more basic level, Ando, it was the changes you blokes brought in that have created this hydra-headed monster. Rather than making more changes, have you considered winding a few of the recent changes back a bit?

And can we (not so) respectfully suggest to Ross Lyon that if he wants two 45-minute halves, he might be better suited to apply for Craig Bellamy’s job. Changing ends less frequently doesn’t bother the british bulldog blokes so much: if the ball’s in the air to be caught by a passing gale, it’s more likely been fumbled by someone than anything else.

You have to remember, Adrian, that footy is a little bit like climate change. You poke a bit more carbon dioxide into the air and it makes a subtle change that you don’t see for fifty years. In the meantime, you didn’t notice a change, so more carbon dioxide obviously wasn’t a problem. Then, by the time you realise carbon dioxide is a BIG problem, we’re all addicted to the stuff and we can’t turn the taps off. And the first lot of changes will now be affected even more by new sets of changes, and so on.

Every extra change we make to footy makes the game as a whole more like a chaotic weather system. No-one knows how the next lot of changes will turn out because the game is still digesting the changes for five to ten years ago.

We here at AussieRulesBlog have long held that umpires make some decisions based on guesswork. We had intuited this on the basis of a lifetime’s worth of football spectating.

Last Saturday evening, watching the last quarter of the North-Essendon game from an unaccustomed seven rows behind the fence, we saw Mark McVeigh fighting hard to gain possession of the ball and pulled to the ground with his back to the umpire. We know this because we were right on the umpire’s line of sight, so we were seeing pretty much exactly what the umpire was seeing.

We couldn’t see the ball. We didn’t know whether McVeigh still had the ball or whether a North opponent had taken it from him as they were surrounded by as many as fifteen players and buried under another four or five, with McVeigh still lying on the ground with his back to the umpire.

So the picture here is a confused tangle of bodies where we cannot be sure of the location — or possession — of the ball.

You know already, dear Reader, what happened next, don’t you? The umpire slowly brought the whistle to his mouth, blew a long blast and then made that awful sweeping gesture to indicate a free kick against McVeigh for not having disposed of the ball correctly.

So, the umpire either guessed, or is possessed of x-ray vision.

Either way, it’s not appropriate to make decisions on that basis.