No advantage in this decision

AFL football operations boss Adrian Anderson has announced only minor changes to the open sore that was player-initiated advantage.

 

Anderson said the slight modification was made after feedback from clubs, players and fans. Well, that may be strictly true, but AussieRulesBlog finds it difficult to imagine that any of the mentioned groups would have agreed to the rule remaining in any form.

 

Advantage will not apply in 2012 to free kicks paid by an “out-of-zone” umpire. Superficially, this seems like an improvement, but there are plenty of scenarios in games, especially at stoppages at either end of the ground, where two umpires operate in quite close proximity.

 

The umpires seem to have a fairly good handle on which of them is in control at any point, but for the rest of us it is a mystery.

 

Most puzzlingly, in 2012 the umpires will have “more time allowed … to consider the actual advantage.”

 

What? If there’s no advantage, they’ll call the ball back? Certainly, there were any number of incidents during 2011 where this seemed to happen, despite the provision for such action having been removed in the rewriting of the advantage law to allow player-initiated advantage.

 

The game now finds itself in a position where the lawmakers don’t rewrite a law that doesn’t work. Instead, changes to interpretations — for the most part not codified — are announced, and then the interpretation of the interpretation changes evolve over time as the laws committee and the umpiring administration realise that their initial interpretations are overzealous.

 

This continual tinkering, especially when it’s not spelled out clearly in a written law, is a crock.

 

Player-initiated advantage was, and is, a nonsense in Australian rules. It doesn’t work. Players are confused. Umpires are confused. Media are confused. Fans are confused. These changes don’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. It’s still a sow’s ear, no matter how hard the AFL talks it up.