Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Priority irony

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The unfolding so-called 'tanking' issue that threatens Melbourne Football Club has many facets, but none more intriguing that the club's failure to gain the desired elevation through acquiring low draft picks.

The apparent focus on the conclusion to the 2009 season turns the spotlight on the resultant draft picks. Tom Scully, famously, is no longer with the Demons, instead reaping huge rewards from the Giants and Jack Trengove had the Captaincy thrust onto his shoulders whilst still learning the game.

Similarly, Jack Watts has yet to discover where his red cloak is, put his red underpants on the outside  and lead the Dees to the promised land. 

And perhaps it's the Trengove captaincy that is most damning of the club's strategy. In their pursuit of youth, almost at any cost, they found themselves without any leaders worthy of the name in the playing group.

Did the Demons unwittingly show the Suns and the Giants how necessary on-field leaders would be with such young playing groups? The Demons' activities in the just-finished trading period show what a significant dearth of leaders they have had.
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Saturday, October 27, 2012

An inexact science

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The scandal/kerfuffle/mess that is Kurt Tippett’s recently-expired contract with the Crows will be the big story out of this first free agency period trading. The ramifications for the competition generally, and for Tippett and the Crows specifically, look to be far-reaching. And yet, AussieRulesBlog thinks there’s another story hidden in the last day of trading.

 

Five years ago, the Demons used pick 4 in the AFL National Draft to take a skinny kid named Cale Morton. This week, those same Demons, admittedly with a different coaching group in place, have seen Morton off to West Coast in exchange for pick 88.

 

This is either a spectacular devaluation or one of the most graphic illustrations seen of how fraught the AFL Draft is. Perhaps it’s both?

 

Morton isn’t the first draftee not to live up to the billing, but fans rightly expect something of quality from a top ten pick, let alone a top four. It’s not Morton’s fault that his name was read out at pick four either!

 

Just for some perspective, the top ten picks for that year — 2007 — were:

1. Matthew Kreuzer

2. Trent Cotchin

3. Chris Masten

4. Cale Morton

5. Jarrad Grant

6. David Myers

7. Rhys Palmer

8. Lachlan Henderson

9. Ben McEvoy

10. Patrick Dangerfield

 

And for some further perspective, from the same Draft —

12. Cyril Rioli

13. Brad Ebert

17. Harry Taylor

19. Callan Ward

22. Scott Selwood

29. Brendan Whitecross

35. Sam Reid

37. Scott Thompson

43. Easton Wood

46. Dennis Armfield

59. Craig Bird (NSW Scholarship)

75. Taylor Walker (NSW Scholarship)

 

With the exception of (in our assessment of current value) Dangerfield, Cotchin, McEvoy and Kreuzer, the other six in the top ten are all easily supplanted by those lower picks.

 

Of course, clubs draft for position as much as for quality, so these assessments are necessarily quite subjective.

 

Neverthless, it’s enough to make us glad we’re not working in recruiting.

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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

A man’s word may not be his bond

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The revelation of an agreement outside of contract between Adelaide and Kurt Tippett is a big test for the AFL — and not for the reasons you might suspect.

 

It appears the agreement, as Adelaide understood it, was to trade Tippett to a club in Queensland — Tippett’s home state — at the conclusion of his contract.

 

The rock on the rails that derailed this plan was Tippett’s decision to nominate Sydney as his preferred club. The prospect of a well-regarded player moving to the Premiership club would, on its own, have been sufficient to pique the interest of the trade and draft police at the AFL.

 

Had Tippett chosen Gold Coast, does anyone think we’d be reading about this in any other than positive terms? Or Brisbane?

 

Did Adelaide assume too much? Did Tippett dud the Crows (and make himself a cult hero for fans of 17 other clubs)?

 

AussieRulesBlog can’t see anything intrinsically detrimental in an arrangement for a player to move on at the expiry of a contract. In fact, it seems a quite sensible arrangement. The only fly in this ointment was the red and white ribbons on the Premiership Cup last month.

 

Should the AFL have absolute right of veto over every trade? This policy would seem to be part of the AFL’s attempt to equalise the competition — another tool in the suite that already features salary caps, priority picks, compensation drafts and reverse order drafting. And, at least to some extent, that’s alright — if it works.

 

The Saints boast a clutch (now minus one) of low-numbered draft picks. They’ve been at the pointy end of the competition for a good while. They’ve made it to the Big Dance and but for a whimsical bounce might have secured that long-dreamt of Premiership.

 

The Tigers have also fielded a significant squad of prestige draft picks, but without the long-term success. For the Tiges, long-term is a month.

 

The Demons had more single-figure draft picks than a line of binary code (that’s ones and zeros, people), but without threatening to look like a proper football team.

 

Clearly, for some clubs, those primary draft picks have been more millstone than jet engine.

 

We don’t have any huge problem with the AFL scrutinising and rubber-stamping contracts and trade deals, but we’re finding it difficult to understand what there was about the Tippett arrangement that’s different to Koby Stevens nominating the Bulldogs as his preferred club when the trading period began. The truth is, the only difference is that Tippett made his desires known three years earlier than Stevens — and according to Adelaide he has welched on the deal.

 

Given Sydney’s record with recycling players, there’s every chance that an end of the Docklands Stadium will be renamed the Tippett end some time in the future and that is a scary thought for everyone, not least the Camrys.

 

What next? A chief executive draft?

 

The test for the AFL? Not making asses of themselves.

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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

AFL makes right call on rucks

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Hooray! It’s not often that AussieRulesBlog is in almost complete sync with the AFL, but we are today.

 

First and foremost we’ll see an end to the ugly blight of ruck wrestling. Making the rule trialled during the 2012 pre-season a permanent feature, ruckmen will no longer be able to make contact with each other before the ball has left the umpire’s hands.

 

1_GFHaSy12AW%201764[1]

 

AussieRulesBlog has a real problem with anyone who thinks the above scene is either attractive or within the other rules of the game. If Mike Pyke and David Hale aren’t holding each other in this image, then AussieRulesBlog should be watching the Melbourne ‘Victory’.

 

We’re not concerned that inability to wrestle for five minutes before the ball is back into play will somehow advantage ruckmen like Nic Naitanui. For all of a couple of weeks it might, and then the competition’s strategists will figure out a way to limit Naitanui’s effectiveness.

 

Even supposed ‘dinosaurs’ like Shane Mumford and Darren Jolley will manage. How often have either conceded an easy contest at a centre bounce in the past couple of years? No contact beforehand there, and both Mumford and Jolley have somehow contrived to deliver the ball to their midfielders pretty effectively.

 

We’re also in the mood to applaud the game’s custodians on their other rule changes, although we’re sad to see the relegation of the umpire’s bounce to a largely ceremonial role. It’s the beginning of the end for the bounce. In five years, it’ll be a curiosity.

 

Laying on tackled players and pulling the ball in beneath an opponent have been highly unattractive features of the game for too long. We’re not totally convinced about forceful contact beneath the knees, but we acknowledge the danger it poses.

 

Of course, there’s often quite a distance between our expectations of how a new rule will influence the game and how The Giesch’s mob implement that rule. that will be the test and we’ll reserve absolute applause until we see the rules in action.

 

Interchange cap
Unfortunately, there’s been a lack of will to implement an interchange cap. Long-time readers will recall that AussieRulesBlog wrote passionately of the benefits of a cap over a substitute. And, largely, our fears have been realised. There’s not that big a difference between rotation numbers in 2012 and what they were before the substitute. Entirely predictable — and we predicted it!

 

Surprising no-one, Barcodes chief cook and bottle washer, Eddie Everywhere, decided to wheel out the super hyperbole and suggested AFL players will be blood doping within weeks.

 

We’re not sure what Eddie has been sniffing, but we want some! The facts are that the game has become quicker because of unfettered interchange. Yes, players have become fitter, but their running capacity has been significantly enhanced by having more short rests. Some of Dane Swan’s visits to the pine last only thirty seconds.

 

It’s only logical that reducing interchanges — which the three-and-one bench was supposed to do and patently failed to achieve — will reduce players’ running capacity. They could dope, and thanks for that helpful suggestion, Eddie, or they could simply pace themselves more so they have some petrol tickets left for the last ten minutes.

 

Eddie and those who think like him are locked into maintaining the game exactly as it is played at the conclusion of 2012. There’s no law or logic that says that must be the case!

 

If players can’t rest as often, they’ll have to ration out their effort across their game time. It’s not hard to figure out. And we would likely see a reduction in soft tissue and collision injury to boot.

 

AussieRulesBlog waits with bated breath for the 2014 rule changes.

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Monday, October 15, 2012

Nasty times for some players

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Here at AussieRulesBlog Central, we haven’t had the opportunity to watch David Rodan ply his trade, week in and week out. We reckon it would have been a privilege to have done so.

 

rodan-300x0[1]

 

We could never understand why the Tigers moved him on after 66 games, and now, 111 games further on, Port Adelaide have taken the same decision. Both clubs haven’t had lists full of blokes giving 150%, getting the ball, running and driving it forward. And yet Rodan is moved on.

 

Obviously the clubs know the man better than we do as casual observers. Rodan has had three ACL operations and is nearing 30 years old. These must be factors. And it’s true that Rodan hasn’t been a star, but. . .

 

Any time we’ve seen him, he’s been having a red hot go, and that’s all most footy fans want to see.

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Friday, October 12, 2012

In their shoes

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Here at AussieRulesBlog Central, we’ve been ruminating on the [insert sponsor] AFL Trade Period. Well, with footy over for the year, other than reliving some of 2012’s glory by replay, there’s not much else to do if the round ball sends you off to sleep faster than a handful of Valium.

 

Free agency and the extended draft period seems to have unlocked a lot of wanderlust amongst the AFL’s six hundred-odd players. After two weeks, we’ve seen players dashing around the competition like snooker balls after a particularly strong break. It’s all quite unusual, and not a little disconcerting.

 

But we’ve been thinking. Not long ago, we were ourselves in a situation where our daily grind at the millstone to assuage the bank manager was under some pressure. Even had that not been the case, were we sufficiently disenchanted with our place at the coalface, we are perfectly at liberty to go off searching for other, more attractive options. Find another employer, satisfy them of our willingness to bleed for the company’s bottom line and we’re off.

 

Not so, your AFL footballer. Admittedly, apart from the rookies, they can buy and sell AussieRulesBlog quite easily. Yet during the season, every week, we expect them to put their bodies in harm’s way, and we’re ever ready to criticise if we determine they haven’t gone in hard enough. (We are talking of the general ‘we’ here, not the Royal ‘we’.)

 

But let them hint that they’re not as happy at ‘club X’ as we deem they should be and we quickly label them as traitors and turncoats. As do some of their ex-teammates this week!

 

How many of us would put up with the restrictions on our trade of our labours that AFL players must submit to? Not many, we’ll wager.

 

Next time your boss or your coworkers are getting up your nasal passage, just contemplate what it could be like if your boss could match the offer you got from another employer and keep you at the familiar grindstone against your will.

 

Hmmm. This trade period doesn’t look so bad now.

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Monday, October 08, 2012

It was 40 years ago (today) . . .

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It was twenty years ago today, Sgt Pepper taught the band to play. . .

 

Listening to and reading about the dramatic changes to AFL lists through this [insert sponsor] AFL Trading Period brings to mind the tumultuous times of the 10-Year Rule of 1972–3.

 

In the 60s and 70s, player movements were tightly controlled. A player needed registration by the governing bodies to be eligible to play, and they required a form known as a “Clearance” before endorsing the registration of players moving between clubs, between competitions and even between States.

 

Kevin Sheedy famously crossed from Prahran in the Victorian Football Association to Richmond in the Victorian Football League — without a clearance. It meant that Sheedy was banned from playing in the VFA again. At the time, that was a BIG deal and BIG news.

 

In mid 1972, the VFL decided that players with ten years’ continuous service with a VFL club would be entitled to join the club of their choice — without a clearance.

 

Perennial cellar-dwellers, North Melbourne, had already secured the services of Ron Barassi as coach for 1973. When the 10-Year Rule was announced, North President Allen Aylett and Secretary Ron Joseph went on a legendary recruiting drive.

 

They secured mid-fielder/half-back Barry Davis from Essendon, 100-goal full forward Doug Wade from Geelong and rugged utility John Rantall from South Melbourne. Along with the great Barry Cable from WA and Malcolm Blight from SA, home-grown youngsters Keith Greig, Wayne Schimmelbusch and David Dench also arrived at North.

 

Other established players who transferred under the 10-Year Rule were Carl Ditterich (from St Kilda to Melbourne), Adrian Gallagher (from Carlton to Footscray) and George Bisset (from Footscray to Collingwood).

 

By May 1973, the clubs had lobbied the VFL to drop the 10-Year Rule.

 

It was enough of a window for North to go on to win their first Premiership in 1975 and their second, after the drawn Grand Final against the Barcodes, in 1977.

 

It’s really the only other time in VFL/AFL history where so many well-known players have changed clubs almost at once.

 

It seems unlikely, though, that current cellar dwellers will benefit the way North did in the 70s. Those were heady times.

 

Interestingly, almost all of the 10-Year Rule players eventually returned to their original clubs as coaches, match committee members and the like. It was a time of not much money in the game for the players and North offered what was then considered truckloads. It bought the players’ services, but not their hearts.

 

AussieRulesBlog wonders what we’ll say of the first year of free agency forty years from now.

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Thursday, October 04, 2012

Show me the money?

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It’s always tempting to assume the most obvious reason is the right answer, but some further consideration can often reveal other, more likely, possibilities. The Goddard free agency move is a current issue on which to test the theorem.

Conventional wisdom, and the most obvious conclusion, would suggest that Goddard is chasing more money in his move to Essendon. And it may be that it is that simple, but AussieRulesBlog — already on the record as a Goddard-sceptic — has been thinking about how other factors may have influenced the decision.

There’s no question that Goddard was well paid at St Kilda. The three-year deal offered by the Saints would have been substantial. The Bombers, keen to secure Goddard, offered more money and a four-year contract. Barring injury, it’s hard to imagine that St Kilda wouldn’t have done a further deal with Goddard, so the extra year on the contract would seem to be an unlikely deal-clincher.

The reported values of the three and four-year deals differed by around $100–150k per year: around $600k with St Kilda and low to mid $700k with the Bombers. Again, on face value, it looks like around a 25% increase, but after fees and tax, the numbers look less attractive.

For someone whose preference, apparently, was to stay with the Saints, it hasn't taken that much to break him loose. That, and the Saints’ fairly muted reaction — not to mention their unwillingness to meet the Bombers’ offer — suggests that the relationship with the Saints wasn’t all that it could have been.

Scott Watters and his leadership group may be not overly upset to lose a possibly disruptive influence, or one that maybe didn't put the team first in their eyes. For his part, Goddard may feel quite stale, may not be infatuated with Watters' methods — or may simply need some new golf partners!

Before free agency, a player moderately unhappy in his circumstances had little option but to suck it up and make the best of his situation. A player of Goddard's stature would have been an unlikely trade. It's hard to see the Bombers giving up Michael Hurley or Jobe Watson to secure Goddard, and you can be sure the Saints would have driven a bargain of that kind had the Bombers or Goddard broached the exchange.

Whatever the reason, the next Bombers–Saints game will have a little spice.

Essendon will be hoping for a result of similar benefit to the famed trade that saw Paul Salmon depart Windy Hill for Hawthorn, Darren Jarman exit the Hawks’ nest for Adelaide and Sean Wellman, the Bombers’ current defensive coach, leave the City of Churches and set up camp at centre-halfback for the Dons.

Of the other deals done in the first few days of the [sponsor name] free-agency trade period — seriously, what next? The Sorbent Toilet Break? How soon before an almost completed trade becomes "a close shave"? — the move of Quinten Lynch to the Barcodes is the one we're scratching our head over. Lynch has two genuine claims to football fame: he has a kick like a mule that isn’t as accurate or as reliable as he'd like it to be; and he makes some horrific blunders. Clearly he offers a more experienced backup to Jolly than Dawes, but he has hardly made the key forward post his own at the Eagles. A Dawes on-song offers far more upside, in our view, than Lynch. Still, anything that weakens the Barcodes is good for football!


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Tuesday, October 02, 2012

For life — until a better offer appears

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The first big signing of the free agency era raises plenty of issues, not the least of them being the life membership recently conferred on Brendon Goddard by St Kilda. AussieRulesBlog wonders whether the Saints might rethink that award this week if they had the chance.

 

We’re not fans of the ‘automatic’ life membership. Richmond and Essendon, at least, award life membership for a mere 150 games. We wouldn’t denigrate the achievement of playing 150 games. After all, AussieRulesBlog has played the grand total of zero. A 150-game player may be the most deserving recipient imaginable — but wait until he retires.

 

We’re not fans of awarding life memberships to active players, no matter what their status. Things change — at least in a football sense and sometimes otherwise — that might easily tip the balance away from a life membership. Goddard’s ‘defection’ is just the latest example.

 

Will Goddard be received as enthusiastically in the future as he might have expected as a one-club player? The answer, dear reader, is as plain as the nose on your face. And the very starkness of that difference must make the decision to leave extremely difficult, or very easy for the mercenary or selfish.

 

Unfortunately, free agency further erodes any sense of loyalty to a club. After playing the requisite number of games, players are free to explore their value should they wish, and to cash in as much as they can while their physical skills allow. Headlines show the Saints putting a brave face on Goddard’s departure, but they must be hurting and feeling somewhat betrayed.

 

Watching the NRL Grand Final — thank goodness for the Storm making that game mildly interesting — we were amazed to hear that three or four players in that game had changed clubs in the middle of the year. AussieRulesBlog hopes never to see that happening in AFL.

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Priority irony

The unfolding so-called 'tanking' issue that threatens Melbourne Football Club has many facets, but none more intriguing that the club's failure to gain the desired elevation through acquiring low draft picks.

The apparent focus on the conclusion to the 2009 season turns the spotlight on the resultant draft picks. Tom Scully, famously, is no longer with the Demons, instead reaping huge rewards from the Giants and Jack Trengove had the Captaincy thrust onto his shoulders whilst still learning the game.

Similarly, Jack Watts has yet to discover where his red cloak is, put his red underpants on the outside  and lead the Dees to the promised land. 

And perhaps it's the Trengove captaincy that is most damning of the club's strategy. In their pursuit of youth, almost at any cost, they found themselves without any leaders worthy of the name in the playing group.

Did the Demons unwittingly show the Suns and the Giants how necessary on-field leaders would be with such young playing groups? The Demons' activities in the just-finished trading period show what a significant dearth of leaders they have had.

An inexact science

The scandal/kerfuffle/mess that is Kurt Tippett’s recently-expired contract with the Crows will be the big story out of this first free agency period trading. The ramifications for the competition generally, and for Tippett and the Crows specifically, look to be far-reaching. And yet, AussieRulesBlog thinks there’s another story hidden in the last day of trading.

 

Five years ago, the Demons used pick 4 in the AFL National Draft to take a skinny kid named Cale Morton. This week, those same Demons, admittedly with a different coaching group in place, have seen Morton off to West Coast in exchange for pick 88.

 

This is either a spectacular devaluation or one of the most graphic illustrations seen of how fraught the AFL Draft is. Perhaps it’s both?

 

Morton isn’t the first draftee not to live up to the billing, but fans rightly expect something of quality from a top ten pick, let alone a top four. It’s not Morton’s fault that his name was read out at pick four either!

 

Just for some perspective, the top ten picks for that year — 2007 — were:

1. Matthew Kreuzer

2. Trent Cotchin

3. Chris Masten

4. Cale Morton

5. Jarrad Grant

6. David Myers

7. Rhys Palmer

8. Lachlan Henderson

9. Ben McEvoy

10. Patrick Dangerfield

 

And for some further perspective, from the same Draft —

12. Cyril Rioli

13. Brad Ebert

17. Harry Taylor

19. Callan Ward

22. Scott Selwood

29. Brendan Whitecross

35. Sam Reid

37. Scott Thompson

43. Easton Wood

46. Dennis Armfield

59. Craig Bird (NSW Scholarship)

75. Taylor Walker (NSW Scholarship)

 

With the exception of (in our assessment of current value) Dangerfield, Cotchin, McEvoy and Kreuzer, the other six in the top ten are all easily supplanted by those lower picks.

 

Of course, clubs draft for position as much as for quality, so these assessments are necessarily quite subjective.

 

Neverthless, it’s enough to make us glad we’re not working in recruiting.

A man’s word may not be his bond

The revelation of an agreement outside of contract between Adelaide and Kurt Tippett is a big test for the AFL — and not for the reasons you might suspect.

 

It appears the agreement, as Adelaide understood it, was to trade Tippett to a club in Queensland — Tippett’s home state — at the conclusion of his contract.

 

The rock on the rails that derailed this plan was Tippett’s decision to nominate Sydney as his preferred club. The prospect of a well-regarded player moving to the Premiership club would, on its own, have been sufficient to pique the interest of the trade and draft police at the AFL.

 

Had Tippett chosen Gold Coast, does anyone think we’d be reading about this in any other than positive terms? Or Brisbane?

 

Did Adelaide assume too much? Did Tippett dud the Crows (and make himself a cult hero for fans of 17 other clubs)?

 

AussieRulesBlog can’t see anything intrinsically detrimental in an arrangement for a player to move on at the expiry of a contract. In fact, it seems a quite sensible arrangement. The only fly in this ointment was the red and white ribbons on the Premiership Cup last month.

 

Should the AFL have absolute right of veto over every trade? This policy would seem to be part of the AFL’s attempt to equalise the competition — another tool in the suite that already features salary caps, priority picks, compensation drafts and reverse order drafting. And, at least to some extent, that’s alright — if it works.

 

The Saints boast a clutch (now minus one) of low-numbered draft picks. They’ve been at the pointy end of the competition for a good while. They’ve made it to the Big Dance and but for a whimsical bounce might have secured that long-dreamt of Premiership.

 

The Tigers have also fielded a significant squad of prestige draft picks, but without the long-term success. For the Tiges, long-term is a month.

 

The Demons had more single-figure draft picks than a line of binary code (that’s ones and zeros, people), but without threatening to look like a proper football team.

 

Clearly, for some clubs, those primary draft picks have been more millstone than jet engine.

 

We don’t have any huge problem with the AFL scrutinising and rubber-stamping contracts and trade deals, but we’re finding it difficult to understand what there was about the Tippett arrangement that’s different to Koby Stevens nominating the Bulldogs as his preferred club when the trading period began. The truth is, the only difference is that Tippett made his desires known three years earlier than Stevens — and according to Adelaide he has welched on the deal.

 

Given Sydney’s record with recycling players, there’s every chance that an end of the Docklands Stadium will be renamed the Tippett end some time in the future and that is a scary thought for everyone, not least the Camrys.

 

What next? A chief executive draft?

 

The test for the AFL? Not making asses of themselves.

AFL makes right call on rucks

Hooray! It’s not often that AussieRulesBlog is in almost complete sync with the AFL, but we are today.

 

First and foremost we’ll see an end to the ugly blight of ruck wrestling. Making the rule trialled during the 2012 pre-season a permanent feature, ruckmen will no longer be able to make contact with each other before the ball has left the umpire’s hands.

 

1_GFHaSy12AW%201764[1]

 

AussieRulesBlog has a real problem with anyone who thinks the above scene is either attractive or within the other rules of the game. If Mike Pyke and David Hale aren’t holding each other in this image, then AussieRulesBlog should be watching the Melbourne ‘Victory’.

 

We’re not concerned that inability to wrestle for five minutes before the ball is back into play will somehow advantage ruckmen like Nic Naitanui. For all of a couple of weeks it might, and then the competition’s strategists will figure out a way to limit Naitanui’s effectiveness.

 

Even supposed ‘dinosaurs’ like Shane Mumford and Darren Jolley will manage. How often have either conceded an easy contest at a centre bounce in the past couple of years? No contact beforehand there, and both Mumford and Jolley have somehow contrived to deliver the ball to their midfielders pretty effectively.

 

We’re also in the mood to applaud the game’s custodians on their other rule changes, although we’re sad to see the relegation of the umpire’s bounce to a largely ceremonial role. It’s the beginning of the end for the bounce. In five years, it’ll be a curiosity.

 

Laying on tackled players and pulling the ball in beneath an opponent have been highly unattractive features of the game for too long. We’re not totally convinced about forceful contact beneath the knees, but we acknowledge the danger it poses.

 

Of course, there’s often quite a distance between our expectations of how a new rule will influence the game and how The Giesch’s mob implement that rule. that will be the test and we’ll reserve absolute applause until we see the rules in action.

 

Interchange cap
Unfortunately, there’s been a lack of will to implement an interchange cap. Long-time readers will recall that AussieRulesBlog wrote passionately of the benefits of a cap over a substitute. And, largely, our fears have been realised. There’s not that big a difference between rotation numbers in 2012 and what they were before the substitute. Entirely predictable — and we predicted it!

 

Surprising no-one, Barcodes chief cook and bottle washer, Eddie Everywhere, decided to wheel out the super hyperbole and suggested AFL players will be blood doping within weeks.

 

We’re not sure what Eddie has been sniffing, but we want some! The facts are that the game has become quicker because of unfettered interchange. Yes, players have become fitter, but their running capacity has been significantly enhanced by having more short rests. Some of Dane Swan’s visits to the pine last only thirty seconds.

 

It’s only logical that reducing interchanges — which the three-and-one bench was supposed to do and patently failed to achieve — will reduce players’ running capacity. They could dope, and thanks for that helpful suggestion, Eddie, or they could simply pace themselves more so they have some petrol tickets left for the last ten minutes.

 

Eddie and those who think like him are locked into maintaining the game exactly as it is played at the conclusion of 2012. There’s no law or logic that says that must be the case!

 

If players can’t rest as often, they’ll have to ration out their effort across their game time. It’s not hard to figure out. And we would likely see a reduction in soft tissue and collision injury to boot.

 

AussieRulesBlog waits with bated breath for the 2014 rule changes.

Nasty times for some players

Here at AussieRulesBlog Central, we haven’t had the opportunity to watch David Rodan ply his trade, week in and week out. We reckon it would have been a privilege to have done so.

 

rodan-300x0[1]

 

We could never understand why the Tigers moved him on after 66 games, and now, 111 games further on, Port Adelaide have taken the same decision. Both clubs haven’t had lists full of blokes giving 150%, getting the ball, running and driving it forward. And yet Rodan is moved on.

 

Obviously the clubs know the man better than we do as casual observers. Rodan has had three ACL operations and is nearing 30 years old. These must be factors. And it’s true that Rodan hasn’t been a star, but. . .

 

Any time we’ve seen him, he’s been having a red hot go, and that’s all most footy fans want to see.

In their shoes

Here at AussieRulesBlog Central, we’ve been ruminating on the [insert sponsor] AFL Trade Period. Well, with footy over for the year, other than reliving some of 2012’s glory by replay, there’s not much else to do if the round ball sends you off to sleep faster than a handful of Valium.

 

Free agency and the extended draft period seems to have unlocked a lot of wanderlust amongst the AFL’s six hundred-odd players. After two weeks, we’ve seen players dashing around the competition like snooker balls after a particularly strong break. It’s all quite unusual, and not a little disconcerting.

 

But we’ve been thinking. Not long ago, we were ourselves in a situation where our daily grind at the millstone to assuage the bank manager was under some pressure. Even had that not been the case, were we sufficiently disenchanted with our place at the coalface, we are perfectly at liberty to go off searching for other, more attractive options. Find another employer, satisfy them of our willingness to bleed for the company’s bottom line and we’re off.

 

Not so, your AFL footballer. Admittedly, apart from the rookies, they can buy and sell AussieRulesBlog quite easily. Yet during the season, every week, we expect them to put their bodies in harm’s way, and we’re ever ready to criticise if we determine they haven’t gone in hard enough. (We are talking of the general ‘we’ here, not the Royal ‘we’.)

 

But let them hint that they’re not as happy at ‘club X’ as we deem they should be and we quickly label them as traitors and turncoats. As do some of their ex-teammates this week!

 

How many of us would put up with the restrictions on our trade of our labours that AFL players must submit to? Not many, we’ll wager.

 

Next time your boss or your coworkers are getting up your nasal passage, just contemplate what it could be like if your boss could match the offer you got from another employer and keep you at the familiar grindstone against your will.

 

Hmmm. This trade period doesn’t look so bad now.

It was 40 years ago (today) . . .

It was twenty years ago today, Sgt Pepper taught the band to play. . .

 

Listening to and reading about the dramatic changes to AFL lists through this [insert sponsor] AFL Trading Period brings to mind the tumultuous times of the 10-Year Rule of 1972–3.

 

In the 60s and 70s, player movements were tightly controlled. A player needed registration by the governing bodies to be eligible to play, and they required a form known as a “Clearance” before endorsing the registration of players moving between clubs, between competitions and even between States.

 

Kevin Sheedy famously crossed from Prahran in the Victorian Football Association to Richmond in the Victorian Football League — without a clearance. It meant that Sheedy was banned from playing in the VFA again. At the time, that was a BIG deal and BIG news.

 

In mid 1972, the VFL decided that players with ten years’ continuous service with a VFL club would be entitled to join the club of their choice — without a clearance.

 

Perennial cellar-dwellers, North Melbourne, had already secured the services of Ron Barassi as coach for 1973. When the 10-Year Rule was announced, North President Allen Aylett and Secretary Ron Joseph went on a legendary recruiting drive.

 

They secured mid-fielder/half-back Barry Davis from Essendon, 100-goal full forward Doug Wade from Geelong and rugged utility John Rantall from South Melbourne. Along with the great Barry Cable from WA and Malcolm Blight from SA, home-grown youngsters Keith Greig, Wayne Schimmelbusch and David Dench also arrived at North.

 

Other established players who transferred under the 10-Year Rule were Carl Ditterich (from St Kilda to Melbourne), Adrian Gallagher (from Carlton to Footscray) and George Bisset (from Footscray to Collingwood).

 

By May 1973, the clubs had lobbied the VFL to drop the 10-Year Rule.

 

It was enough of a window for North to go on to win their first Premiership in 1975 and their second, after the drawn Grand Final against the Barcodes, in 1977.

 

It’s really the only other time in VFL/AFL history where so many well-known players have changed clubs almost at once.

 

It seems unlikely, though, that current cellar dwellers will benefit the way North did in the 70s. Those were heady times.

 

Interestingly, almost all of the 10-Year Rule players eventually returned to their original clubs as coaches, match committee members and the like. It was a time of not much money in the game for the players and North offered what was then considered truckloads. It bought the players’ services, but not their hearts.

 

AussieRulesBlog wonders what we’ll say of the first year of free agency forty years from now.

Show me the money?

It’s always tempting to assume the most obvious reason is the right answer, but some further consideration can often reveal other, more likely, possibilities. The Goddard free agency move is a current issue on which to test the theorem.

Conventional wisdom, and the most obvious conclusion, would suggest that Goddard is chasing more money in his move to Essendon. And it may be that it is that simple, but AussieRulesBlog — already on the record as a Goddard-sceptic — has been thinking about how other factors may have influenced the decision.

There’s no question that Goddard was well paid at St Kilda. The three-year deal offered by the Saints would have been substantial. The Bombers, keen to secure Goddard, offered more money and a four-year contract. Barring injury, it’s hard to imagine that St Kilda wouldn’t have done a further deal with Goddard, so the extra year on the contract would seem to be an unlikely deal-clincher.

The reported values of the three and four-year deals differed by around $100–150k per year: around $600k with St Kilda and low to mid $700k with the Bombers. Again, on face value, it looks like around a 25% increase, but after fees and tax, the numbers look less attractive.

For someone whose preference, apparently, was to stay with the Saints, it hasn't taken that much to break him loose. That, and the Saints’ fairly muted reaction — not to mention their unwillingness to meet the Bombers’ offer — suggests that the relationship with the Saints wasn’t all that it could have been.

Scott Watters and his leadership group may be not overly upset to lose a possibly disruptive influence, or one that maybe didn't put the team first in their eyes. For his part, Goddard may feel quite stale, may not be infatuated with Watters' methods — or may simply need some new golf partners!

Before free agency, a player moderately unhappy in his circumstances had little option but to suck it up and make the best of his situation. A player of Goddard's stature would have been an unlikely trade. It's hard to see the Bombers giving up Michael Hurley or Jobe Watson to secure Goddard, and you can be sure the Saints would have driven a bargain of that kind had the Bombers or Goddard broached the exchange.

Whatever the reason, the next Bombers–Saints game will have a little spice.

Essendon will be hoping for a result of similar benefit to the famed trade that saw Paul Salmon depart Windy Hill for Hawthorn, Darren Jarman exit the Hawks’ nest for Adelaide and Sean Wellman, the Bombers’ current defensive coach, leave the City of Churches and set up camp at centre-halfback for the Dons.

Of the other deals done in the first few days of the [sponsor name] free-agency trade period — seriously, what next? The Sorbent Toilet Break? How soon before an almost completed trade becomes "a close shave"? — the move of Quinten Lynch to the Barcodes is the one we're scratching our head over. Lynch has two genuine claims to football fame: he has a kick like a mule that isn’t as accurate or as reliable as he'd like it to be; and he makes some horrific blunders. Clearly he offers a more experienced backup to Jolly than Dawes, but he has hardly made the key forward post his own at the Eagles. A Dawes on-song offers far more upside, in our view, than Lynch. Still, anything that weakens the Barcodes is good for football!


For life — until a better offer appears

The first big signing of the free agency era raises plenty of issues, not the least of them being the life membership recently conferred on Brendon Goddard by St Kilda. AussieRulesBlog wonders whether the Saints might rethink that award this week if they had the chance.

 

We’re not fans of the ‘automatic’ life membership. Richmond and Essendon, at least, award life membership for a mere 150 games. We wouldn’t denigrate the achievement of playing 150 games. After all, AussieRulesBlog has played the grand total of zero. A 150-game player may be the most deserving recipient imaginable — but wait until he retires.

 

We’re not fans of awarding life memberships to active players, no matter what their status. Things change — at least in a football sense and sometimes otherwise — that might easily tip the balance away from a life membership. Goddard’s ‘defection’ is just the latest example.

 

Will Goddard be received as enthusiastically in the future as he might have expected as a one-club player? The answer, dear reader, is as plain as the nose on your face. And the very starkness of that difference must make the decision to leave extremely difficult, or very easy for the mercenary or selfish.

 

Unfortunately, free agency further erodes any sense of loyalty to a club. After playing the requisite number of games, players are free to explore their value should they wish, and to cash in as much as they can while their physical skills allow. Headlines show the Saints putting a brave face on Goddard’s departure, but they must be hurting and feeling somewhat betrayed.

 

Watching the NRL Grand Final — thank goodness for the Storm making that game mildly interesting — we were amazed to hear that three or four players in that game had changed clubs in the middle of the year. AussieRulesBlog hopes never to see that happening in AFL.