AussieRulesBlog has officially contributed to charity with our entries to footy tipping! With six games done and dusted for round one, we have picked just two winners — and one of those was (apparently) an upset.

Still, from a generalist football perspective, wins for the Bulldogs (most emphatically) and the Suns (in the battle of the last quarter cripples) were “good for football”. The Suns showed a resilience that many — not ARB, we hasten to add — had suspected would remain absent for years. We hope the players learn the song properly as some were still glancing to the walls for the words!

The Lions would be the biggest loser so far, their sparkling pre-season form having deserted them yesterday at Docklands to the tune of an eleven-goal loss. It’s not an insurmountable hurdle, but it would seem their minds weren’t switched on to the task. The Bulldogs will take enormous confidence and heart from a game that they owned from the first bounce.

For the rest of the Easter weekend, we’ve put the Kiss of Death on Port to overcome the Demons, the Barcodes to deal with a resurgent Kangaroos and the Cats to maintain their mental dominance over the Hawks.

Next weekend, things return to normal, with nine games across the weekend and we can settle down to too much footy! We can’t wait!

It’s a tight game. There can’t be long to go. The team we’re supporting is three points up and can’t get the ball out of the opposition forward line. Out of nowhere, an opposition player flukes a goal! Now we’re three points down. the ball goes back to the centre to restart the game. Can we get the ball into our forward line to get the vital goal to win the game? The tension is electric! There’s a clearance from the centre bounce, it goes to our star player who takes the ball inside 50 and is steadying for a kick for goal . . . .

The tension is obvious. Put in a countdown clock and it’s diminished by a huge degree. But that doesn’t stop the boosters pushing the idea.

AussieRulesBlog simply cannot understand why anyone would want to know ten or twenty seconds before the siren goes that their team’s chances of winning were zero. Watching broadcast games where there is a countdown clock, we know the game is done and dusted and we simply turn it off. There’s just no reason to continue to watch. It’s the unknown time remaining that creates and builds the tension. Once you know, there is no tension.

It almost feels like footy is back properly. Eighty thousand at the G last night to see the Tiges limp over the line in front of the fast-finishing Blues, and more games tomorrow! (No AFL on Good Friday, although NRL and others are quite happy to use the day. Not sure why AFL is skittish about the day, but then ARB is atheist!)

The off season seemed to last forever, although regular scandals and the seemingly interminable Draft and trading period did keep footy in the news. Since the start of the pre-season comp though, the “Phoney War” has dragged on even longer it seems that the off season did.

To borrow a line from Rampaging Roy Slaven and H G Nelson, we need to quickly get back to a situation “where too much [footy] is barely enough”. Bring it on!

Last night, neither the Tiges not the Blues were convincing. Both had periods of dominance. The Tiges tried hard early to kick themselves out of the match and the Blues looked like witches hats, such was their inability to influence the game. Then a switch was flicked and it was the Blues’ turn to dominate. Both sides will rue the missed opportunities, but it’s really hard, at this early stage at least, to imagine that either will play in September.

Lies, damned lies and statistics

And, finally, can we return to a theme from a little while ago? According to Champion Data, Shaun Grigg is an elite AFL player. We’ve never met Shaun and he is probably a perfectly affable chap, but an “elite” AFL player? If ever there were a modern demonstration of Benjamin Disraeli’s famous disdain for statistics, this is it.

Grigg’s decision-making is ordinary and his disposal is poor (although often quite long by foot). He seems to get a bit of the ball, but he doesn’t regularly — or intentionally it seems — put his teammates into advantage. He’s not alone, of course. To be fair, these have been pretty consistent traits of Richmond teams for decades. Even the Tiges’ up and coming stars aren’t immune to the disease with Cotchin and Martin both demonstrating their mortal skills too often last night.

It’s not often that AussieRulesBlog ventures to comment on sports other than AFL. Two reasons: we’re called AussieRulesBlog (duh!); and we’re really only peripherally interested in the other sports. But there’s a special reason today why we’re bending the rules.

Despite the variations in climate between, say, Hobart and Perth or Brisbane, and putting aside home crowds for a moment, travelling AFL teams compete on a more-or-less level playing field. That’s to say, teams can expect to play essentially much the same game in Hobart or Brisbane and have similar expectations of success.

Would that that were the case in international cricket. The Australian cricket team’s humbling in India over recent weeks might be perhaps the ultimate example of ‘home ground advantage’.

In less affluent and more relaxed days, Australian cricket teams would head off for an overseas tour with a schedule of matches against less-exalted local opponents to allow them some acclimatisation time. Not now. Every playing days is so sponsor-crucial that there’s no time for the Australian team to warm up for three or four days against the Maharajah of Dehli’s youth XI. It’s straight into a Test match against the best players the host country can field.

Little wonder then that the tour of India has been such a disaster. Add some questionable team culture and some egos seemingly out of control and you’ve got all the ingredients to become a laughing stock.

So, next time you hear someone having a whinge about a West Coast or Fremantle crowd in Perth baying for free kicks, remind them that it could be a lot worse. It could be Chennai, the oval could be more gravel than grass and the crowd could the three times as big and three times as loud!

One thing was crystal clear in last night’s season opener between the Bombers and the Crows. Only one team had understood and practised the changed rules, especially sliding into a contest.

Crows coach Brenton Sanderson’s contention that the Crows were ‘guinea pigs’ for the sliding rule is nonsense. Both teams were playing under the new rules for the first time (for Premiership points), but only the Bombers seemed to have practised new tackling techniques and understood how to play to the new rules and interpretations.

So, it’s all systems go for the 2013 season, with just three sleeps left. In some ways, it seems like footy never took a break. There was the extended Draft and trading period with the beginning of a new free-agency era, the defection of Brendon Goddard to the Bombers and the subsequent hoo-ha around Kurt Tippett, the Crows and the Swans.

Just when it seemed we could all settle down to be bored to snores with yachting and tennis, the Bombers got on their PR front foot and invited ASADA and the AFL in to examine some practices they thought were OK that were about to be mentioned in the ACC’s report.

And then the AFL decided Melbourne hadn’t ‘tanked’, but fined them $500k just the same and suspended two former club officials.

And just so the AFL didn’t completely hog the sporting highlights, Cronulla Sharks found they had maybe only half a team to field

The pre-season competition has given a taste of what’s to come. More experienced players than ever before have changed clubs — the summer migrations are almost at the levels of NRL. Will the change enhance careers, or sentence them to obscurity AND damnation.

As we noted in our previous post, a few new rules will test the public’s engagement for a few weeks. The coming weekend will give an indication whether The Giesch’s boys put the whistle away last week ‘because it was a Grand Final’. AussieRulesBlog won’t be in the least surprised to see the umpires taking a no-holds-barred approach to implementing the new rules. They’ll justify it by telling themselves they need to stamp their authority on the game, but really they’ll just be their normal overzealous early-season prat selves.

AussieRulesBlog has never been about predictions, at least as far as match results and final ladder positions are concerned, and we’re not about to change. There are, however, a few things we’re waiting to see with some eagerness.

• Will Special K continue his development and stamp a claim as an elite AFL player?
• Will the Giants experience second-year blues (as the Suns seemed to do last year)? And will people stop trying to get their tongues around GWS and just call them the Giants and be done with it?
• Will the Suns surprise the pundits and finish above the Giants?
• Which of the free agents will stamp themselves as the trade of the year?
  Moloney has looked good for the Lions (and the Demons must be wondering why the body snatchers left them with a dud while he was apparently playing for them).

All will soon be revealed, and we’re pretty excited that it’s all about to go again.

Go Bombers!

Having spent much of the pre-season competition period in northern climes, AussieRulesBlog has been catching up with some of the games from that period.

The two biggest things that struck us, apart from the non-apocalyptic effect of interchange caps, were the new interpretation of the push in the back rule and the new rule against forceful contact below the knees.

No doubt, like everyone else, The Giesch’s team will take a little while to come to grips with how these work. The pre-season final seemed to be far more sensibly umpired in these respects than some of the other pre-season games.

We’re most uncomfortable with interpretations that don’t allow the officiating umpire to take into account the context of what they see before them.

So a player who was bending over to take possession of the ball and bumped into an opponents lower legs was free-kicked in a game we viewed tonight. Bending over, not sliding in. Is it the rule that’s poorly written, the interpretation that’s poorly written, or the umpire getting it wrong?

And in the push in the back instance, we’ve seen numerous examples of tackled players being rolled in the tackle to avoid the tackler making contact to the back, but the umpire awarding a free kick, presumably because they thought there must have been miniscule contact to the back.

Neither of these rules are going to be popular with fans as the interpretations stand. Stadiums are going to erupt when these free kicks are awarded. We think players will also feel hard done by as they make strenuous efforts to avoid illegal contact.

Setting up rigid criteria for these rules follows the patterns set in previous years by The Giesch. As the season begins, umpires are calling every little incident that might be perceived to infringe these new interpretations. It results in over-fussy umpiring, frustrated players and a fanbase even more disenchanted with the whistleblowers.

It’s hard to understand how this is a positive for a part of the game struggling to attract recruits.

We estimate about round 4 as the time we’ll start noticing that zero-tolerance rules are being umpires with a little flexibility.

If the AFL, or the AFL Umpiring Department were under the benign dictatorship of AussieRulesBlog, our first instruction would be to give umpires the prerogative to apply the rules in the context of the game going on in front of them. We’d also conduct a vigourous and lengthy campaign to educate football followers to understand how umpires would interpret the rules.

Just waiting for Mike Fitzpatrick’s call . . .

The current ructions in the Australian cricket team appear to be all about commitment and adherence to team values.

AussieRulesBlog watched an interview of Adam Goodes last night (The New Back Page, Fox Sports) and, not for the first time, we were struck by the man's genuine commitment to his teammates.

We were completely gobsmacked by the recent revelations from the Australian swimming team's London campaign.

The common thread? The culture of the team and commitment to sporting excellence as a team. Another common thread? Teams with obviously poor culture tend not to perform to expectations. The Australian cricket team's current Indian tour and the Australian swimming team's much-hyped, but disappointing, London campaign would seem to offer examples.

Despite swimming being a largely individual sport, cultural dynamics in the team saw them deliver an uninspiring result. As taxpayers, we're entitled to expect taxpayer-funded athletes to prepare themselves in the most professional manner possible for the most important competition on their calendar.

The cricket tour of India must be one of the hardest asks of any sporting team, and while the goat track served up as a test cricket pitch in the second test didn't help, the commitment of some team members to overcome the inherent difficulties and make a competitive showing seems to have been well short of what we'd expect of the ccountry's elite cricketers.

In AFL terms, what damage did Travis Cloke's self-indulgent handling of contract negotiations do to his team's Premiership chances? Will Lance Franklin's similar stance cruel the Hawks' chances?

We reckon team success is a lot like rowing a boat. If one or two oarsmen are out of stroke, it's all but impossible to move effectively. If the other oarsmen aren't sure how hard the stroke oarsman is pulling, they're less likely to give the 110% required for success. Last year's AFL Grand Final might have been almost the ultimate expression of the old adage: a champion team will always beat a team of champions.

Barcode ruckman Darren Jolley's gently worded demand in yesterday's Age that the AFL take more notice of players in framing the rules of the game is tantamount to the fox asking to be appointed supervisor of the henhouse.

It is only a few short days since former-coach Ken Judge related examples of coaches advocating for particular rules or interpretations on the (unspoken) basis of advantage for their team. Is there the slightest evidence that players, given the same opportunity, will take a loftier view? Of course not.

Longer-term followers of AussieRulesBlog will recall that we have taken the rules committee to task on many occasions. Notwithstanding those criticisms, the rules committee operate from an assumed position of disinterest -- that is, they are presumed to be taking a big picture view, a view of what is best for ALL stakeholders -- and that's a position the players would find very difficult to convince us they occupied.

That's not to say that Jolley hasn't raised some valid points. The AFL cannot argue his point that the rule changes of recent years have been designed to speed the game up, open it up and make it more free-flowing. In fact, recent changes to the times allowed for players to take free kicks or kick in after points verge on the ridiculous.

For what it's worth, there was a virtual hue and cry when the current three interchange and one substitute bench was introduced. Coaches and players were adamant in their condemnation of the change and predicted wholesale change to the way the game was played. Yet a scant three years later, when the stated aim of that flawed system was to reduce players' capacity to run and compete at the same level, interchange numbers are at the same level as previously, if not higher, and the substitute has become a tactical weapon when the team isn't forced to use it.

If there is no cap on interchange, coaches will continue to use it to elevate the impact of their key midfield runners and possession winners. There's no reason we couldn't see interchange numbers rise toward 200 per game. Already we see players like Dane Swan sprinting to the bench for a thirty second "rest" before sprinting back onto the ground. AussieRulesBlog has previously wondered whether the benefit of these changes is more mental than physical -- and that would tear a fairly large hole in Jolley's argument were it proven.

AussieRulesBlog is currently enjoying the hospitality of that football wasteland known as anywhere north of Brisbane. Starved of intelligent sport, we're enduring seemingly endless 'Super' rugby, (not-so-super?) rugby league and "the world game". We're happy to report that AFL stacks up pretty well. The disorganised mobile wrestling that is rugby defies understanding and seems to be an excuse for a wide-ranging game of stacks-on-the-mill. The simpler -- for the working classes -- rugby league features the anachronism of a scrum where players stand in a clearly desultory manner while the ball is fed into a predetermined set play at the back of the scrum. The non-feeding team don't even make an effort! In an under-20s game we watched this weekend, a team won the ball in a scrum against the feed, a feat the commentators remarked they hadn't seen for years!

And then there's the world game where Wayne Rooney can gull a referee into a free kick by hurdling OVER the legs of a tackling opponent and falling to the ground as though his achilles has been slashed. Oscar-worthy, and he's only one of the more visible exponents of this 'skill'.

To top it all off, all three codes feature endless intentional kicks out of play. This 'skill' was eradicated from Aussie Rules when God's dog was a pup. (Not that we're happy with the prevailing interpretations of the deliberate out of bounds rule in Aussie Rules)

Aussie Rules is in pretty fair shape compared to the competition. Rusted-on adherents aren't going to change their spots, and that's fair enough, but our game is well-placed to acquire new fans.

Should the players have more of a say in the way rules are changed or implemented? Almost certainly not. Are these mooted changes a danger to our game? Absolutely not. Take a chill pill, Darren, and enjoy your position as an on-field elder statesman of the game.

ends

Reports this week that The Giesch is spruiking up the video referral system don't fill AussieRulesBlog with optimism.

Data published with a story by Rohan Connolly in The Age clearly shows the extent of the continuing problem. Of 81 video referrals during the 2012 season,  only 13 resulted in a decision that would not have been made anyway. That's 13 instances out of 10,466 scoring shots — and it seems shots that don't score aren't tracked.

For this wonderful benefit, we endured the equivalent of 81 stoppages of 41 seconds each — that's 55 and a bit minutes of dead and wasted time for only 13 decisions that would not have been made anyway.

If we're talking value for money, this just doesn't cut the mustard. And these figures are the AFL's own analysis. They're not going to be telling us about the cock-ups where the 'system' either didn't help or caused an error.

And the 'solutions' being proffered to make the system better? Hotspot, the data analysis suggests, may have improved the accuracy of the system in another 13 instances. Hotspot? Have these people learned nothing from the 2012 video balls-up? Hotspot worksin cricket because batsman is in a more-or-less consistent positionthat can be covered fairly comprehensively by two (very expensive) cameras for each end of the pitch. Since the AFL won't spring for simple goal line cameras, nominating hotspot as a 'solution' doesn't make a lot of sense. Curiously, another of the solutions offered is in-padding (goal line) cameras. Seriously!

The biggest bug in the AFL's video referral system is the lack of goal-line cameras. Thus umpires refer decisions which the broadcast cameras have almost no chance of making a meaningful contribution to, unless through sheer coincidence. Some 30 incidents of inconclusive footage are noted. That's a disturbingly high proportion of the total number of referrals where the system set up to aid reaching the correct decision hasn't been able to make a contribution.

The Giesch's reason for the system being better?His umpires are more experienced with the process now. It remains to be seen whether that means fewer of what might charitably be termed 'vanity' referrals.