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.

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.

We’re a bit dim here at AussieRulesBlog Central sometimes. We’d be most grateful if some knowledgeable reader could enlighten us on the benefit of high altitude training in the US (or anywhere else for that matter) in November for an AFL season between March and September played at sea level.

Our very basic understanding of physiology suggests that, by March, said high-altitude trainers will have reacclimatised to sea-level conditions again. If the “high-altitude” training were done at Mt Wycheproof (15m), there’d effectively be no wait for the reacclimatisation!

If the 2011 Grand Final were to be played at the top of Mt Kosciusko, perhaps there would be an argument for spending a couple of weeks there beforehand (assuming you’d actually made it!).

Perhaps the Eagles, Dockers, Lions and Suns could go down to Mawson for a couple of weeks to prepare themselves for the Melbourne winter?

Please! Someone explain to us how this is not a joke.

Some time ago, we mentioned in passing the logical disconnect between the umpire-adjudicated advantage rule and 50-metre penalties for those who either judge the umpire’s intent incorrectly and kick the ball on in anticipation of advantage or simply don’t hear the whistle — surely a plausible excuse in front of forty or fifty thousand screaming fans.

Keen students of the game will recall that a player-initiated advantage system was trialled in the pre-season competition this year.

A dozen or so games is insufficient to expose the inadequacies of a trial ruling, and it seems to AussieRulesBlog that the same problem remains in the player-initiated advantage schema: assumptions have to be made about what decision the umpire is about to deliver.

Were the umpires to be equipped with something resembling a miniature harmonica, with one tone for a free kick to team A and another for a free kick to team B, it would be reasonable to penalise a team whose player kicked the ball on in defiance of the whistle tone. In the absence of such a device, and with the capricious nature of many current interpretations, penalties for attempting to initiate an advantage situation verge on the ridiculous.

Let’s go further however and question the legitimacy of advantage as a concept. There isn’t a vanilla-style, one-size-fits-all scenario for advantage, although teams — and their fans — are quick to criticise perceived disadvantage when play is halted and brought back for a free kick.

Too often for AussieRulesBlog’s liking, the team gaining the advantage does so out of a combination of blind, capricious luck and their opponents having stopped on the sound of the whistle.

The fact is that most footballers have been taught to play to the whistle. When you hear the whistle, you stop what you’re doing and turn to the umpire to determine what will happen. For the umpire to suddenly decide that a player who has fortuitously gained free possession of the ball thirty metres in the clear is part of “continuous play” flies in the face of concepts like natural justice and fair play.

It’s our assessment that the rule, as it is currently umpired, is unduly advantageous on too many occasions. (The exception is scenarios where a so-called professional free kick is given up in order to slow down the attacking team. We aren’t enthusiastic about leaning on the umpire’s judgement in these situations, but there isn’t a viable alternative and it’s appropriate that the professional free kick is discouraged. We must also rely on the umpire’s judgement, unfortunately, for feined non-hearing of the whistle, since a kick against the direction of the free kick provides ample time for defenders to organise themselves.) We also note that the current interpretations favour apparently capricious and seemingly random application of the rule.

As we observed in our previous post, we watched the television transfixed as the Magpies appeared to target the Saints’ tagger Clint Jones before the opening bounce. It’s now a matter of record that the Saints not only withstood those unsavoury tactics, but went on to a famous victory after losing their captain to a severe hamstring injury and a key defender to a sickening collision. But what is the take out message?

The Saints are good enough to win without Riewoldt? For one game, yes. We’ll see how long the hamstring keeps him out and see how the team performs over a number of weeks before we pronounce them not a one-man team.

Bad kicking is bad football? Clearly the Magpies had many opportunities in front of goal that they squandered, but we felt, watching the television broadcast, that the Saints held an ascendency all game in general play. We think there’s something more than just ‘bad kicking’.

Going out with the right attitude translates to how the team plays? Collingwood began the game with an essentially negative mindset — they were going to nullify Jones’ tag right from the first moment on the ground. In the ensuing scuffles, Collingwood emerged with key free kick opportunities, but never appeared to have the composure to look like winners.

Even when the hapless Zac Dawson had done his best rabbit in the headlights stare for the third time early in the second quarter, the Saints looked more composed.

We are convinced that elite-level AFL is so even in standard that it is only miniscule differences that generate even 100-point-plus losses.

Whether pre-planned or not, and it certainly looked to be a planned action, Collingwood entered the arena with a negative mindset, focussing on a player rather than winning each and every contest for the ball.

The Saints are no angels. Baker, in particular, plays on the knife edge in his own negative, run-with roles. Nevertheless, the Saints seemed to win crucial contests for the ball and to make the most of their opportunities where Collingwood squandered theirs.

There’s a football truism — ninety per cent of the game is played above the shoulders. We think it might be even more important than that.