Agenda setting on television?

The furore over coaches’ runners in AFL has been brought on purely and simply because of Seven’s packaging of a wired-up Rohan Smith on last Friday night’s broadcast.

 

Seven’s half-time package of Smith, from the first half of the game, gave the impression that he did nothing other than coach while he was on the field. When a half of AFL lasts fifty to sixty minutes and the runner could spend, practically, at most twenty-five to thirty minutes on the field, a sixty to ninety-second package of vision and audio can hardly be taken as representative of the whole period.

 

And does anyone believe that Seven’s director and editors didn’t see the opportunity to create some controversy?

 

AussieRulesBlog is nevertheless puzzled on a number of issues.

 

Why would Smith agree to wear the wire, presumably being aware of the sensitivity of the issue? Why would the club, through its football department, agree to it? Or did Smith believe he could temper his behaviour and got ‘caught up in the moment’?

 

It’s hard not to see Seven has having sold Smith and the Bulldogs a pup. It’s hard not to conclude that they knew, or at the very least had a pretty shrewd idea, what they’d get from the exercise.

 

The most puzzling issue is whether AFL management allow the agenda to be driven by broadcasters or whether they put Seven up to the job to create a clamour for action.

 

Coaches’ runners spending time on the ground has been a long-standing issue. The nature of AFL, the length of defined periods of play and the size of the field all mitigate against the sort of messaging from the sideline used in, for instance, soccer.

 

America’s NFL has no need for such messaging because of the stop-start nature of the game, frequent change of on-field personnel and ‘time-outs’.

 

So, in a practical sense, coaches’ runners in AFL are a mixed blessing. As with any other rule, coaches will push the envelope and stretch interpretations until breaking point. Smith and Seven may have brought the matter to a head, but there’s little prospect of runners being removed from the game.

 

Finally, according to Caroline Wilson’s article, the AFL is “increasingly concerned that errant on-field messengers were hurting the game as a spectacle”. What? What absolute nonsense! AussieRulesBlog simply cannot think of a single instance where another club’s runner changed the spectacle of the game in any way. Of course, it goes without saying that [WARNING: sarcasm following] our club’s runners have the purest of motives and would never transgress the rules.

 

AussieRulesBlog can’t imagine that the football departments of the sixteen other clubs are feeling warm and fuzzy to the Bulldogs’ footy department this week.