Jeff Kennett, in full high dudgeon, is loudly decrying the AFL's free agency deal. It's all to no avail Jeff. No doubt, you are heartily missing the days of the mark and kick game of the 50s and 60s. That darned Ron Barassi and his handball. Then there was John Kennedy and his Commando training. That nasty Kevin Sheedy made a virtue of players able to move forward or back as the needs of the team dictated. And let's not forget the introduction of interchange, or before that, a 20th man. Let's all move back to the traditional suburban grounds, cut loose all the interstate interlopers, reinstate South Melbourne and Fitzroy and just pretend that the last 50 years didn't happen!

Seriously Jeff, even you must realise that the game is constantly evolving. Coaches and administrations invent new ways to do things on and off the field to gain an advantage over their competitors. Holding back this evolution is like King Canute commanding the waves not to creep up the beach. It's nice for you to have your picture in the paper again, but you're way off the mark on this one.

AussieRulesBlog has noticed a smidgin of criticism of the AFL's newly announced free agency rules. Normally, we'd be antagonists, but we think the AFL, AFLPA and clubs have worked out a deal that provides an appropriate level of flexibility for players, whilst providing clubs with the assurance they need to invest in developing young players.

Mark this down in your diary, readers! Well done AFL!

Ian Collins is kidding, isn’t he? The Docklands stadium looks like an early season NFL game where the city’s baseball team remains in the playoffs. In either case, the aesthetic result is less than desirable. One can only speculate what the repercussions might be were a player to be injured playing on sand.

The AFL must ensure that this travesty does not happen again! Take a lesson from FIFA, Andrew, and play hard ball on playing surfaces.

A report in The Age today that the turf at the Docklands stadium will still be suffering the ravages of hosting three AC/DC concerts over recent days when the Saints and the Magpies run out on Friday is troubling.

Here at AussieRulesBlog Central, we quite enjoy a bit of Angus and the boys belting out some driving rock, yet it seems to us that hosting such an event less than a fortnight before scheduled AFL and A League fixtures is pushing the stadium’s relationship with the AFL to extremes.

We understand that the stadium would seek additional income to keep investors happy, but a major concert series so close to is biting the hand that feeds the stadium. Were it not for AFL, the investors would be wringing their hands.

Ian Collins has always seemed to work pretty close to the line, notoriously so at Carlton, on the side of the ‘angels’ at the AFL, and now at the Docklands stadium. He plays the business game as hard as he played VFL football and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But the AFL world is entitled to expect to be given more consideration than is being shown on this occasion.

AussieRulesBlog is not the first commentator to note the propensity of AFL clubs recently to act before guilt has been established. The Saints have taken it to a new level by sacking Andrew Lovett today after a charge of rape was laid against him.

Underlying the Saints’ action is is the assumption that he is guilty — before the charges have been tested in court. In fact, the Saints have taken a fairly aggressive stance with Lovett pretty much from day one: an interesting course considering his somewhat chequered recent past, their trading of a first-round draft pick to secure him and the loss of a onetime club captain.

We make no claim or comment about Lovett’s guilt or innocence. That is the court’s task. But it does seem to us a bit rich for the Saints to have taken the actions they have as the circumstances have unfolded. Scuttlebutt would suggest he didn’t endear himself to the Saints’ playing group in the short time they were together, and that, as much as anything, may be behind much of what is now unfolding — keeping the troops happy.

Every Australian citizen, apart from AFL  and NRL footballers it seems, is entitled to the presumption of innocence, despite the hyperbole of the popular media on an almost daily basis. Why, we wonder, are these footballers a special case? Why can their livelihoods be snatched away at the breath of a scandal?

Lovett was always going to be a high-maintenance project for the Saints. What will they do if he’s not found guilty? Clearly, if that eventuates, they’ll find themselves back in court quick smart defending an action for wrongful dismissal.

We find it rather serendipitous that the first semi-serious hitout for the season should provide such a stark example of the problems inherent in Adrian Anderson’s proposed video referral model.

In the Essendon-West Coast nab Cup game, the ball dribbled toward the goal line and the goal umpire, who had positioned himself straddling the goal line, with his back to the goalpost.

We have no issue with the goalie’s positioning. It’s exactly what we’d expect to maximise his chances of judging when the ball had fully crossed the line.

The ball hit the goalie’s leg and then glanced off to hit the goalpost. The goalie judged that a goal had been scored.

Before the ball was bounced to restart play, either a third goal umpire or one of the field umpires — the commentary team were certainly unsure of the provenance of this decision — overturned the decision, apparently on the basis of a video replay, and the goalie was instructed (we presume) to reverse his decision and award a behind.

There are three issues that are raised by this stream of events. The first concerns the initial decision and its basis. The second concerns the basis for overturning the decision, and the third relates to the circumstances that allowed the decision to be reviewed.

Looking at the initial decision, did the goalie see the whole ball cross the goal line, or did he assume that it would have done so had it not struck his leg? Given the proximity of his head and leg, it seems inconceivable that he didn’t have a good view.

Had the ball fully crossed the goal line before it struck the goalie’s leg, then a goal is the correct decision. Only the goalie knows whether he saw that happen.

If we then turn to the basis for overturning the decision, it was, not to put too fine a point on it, spurious. The angle of the camera didn’t allow a judgement to be made about whether the ball had entirely crossed the goal line at the time that it struck the goalie’s leg. How then can the decision be overturned? The reviewing official, whoever they were, did not have as clear a view as the goalie, and could fairly be said to have had a much worse perspective.

That the ball eventually struck the goalpost is immaterial, yet that seemed to be the basis for overturning the goalie’s decision. Perhaps there was a video feed that wasn’t publicly available, but based on the channel 7 footage shown, there could not have been a foolproof, incontestable basis for overturning the decision.

Thirdly, leaving aside the second issue for the moment and remembering that AussieRulesBlog has made this point before, it was only because the initial decision was to award a goal that there was time to review the decision. Had the ‘erroneous’ decision been to award a behind, there would have been no time to review.

So, the outcome of a game might turn on whether an unwarranted goal is awarded or not. An unwarranted behind simply cannot be reviewed since the laws of the game allow the defending team to kick the ball back into play almost immediately.

We said at the time this video referral process was announced that it was a crock. This first instance serves only to illustrate how right we were!

AussieRulesBlog was hoping the umpires would avoid their traditional rush to over-officiating at the start of the season. The first three games seem to have produced a rather mixed bag.

The Essendon-West Coast game, which we watched on TV in its entirety, was notable for the absence of influence from the umpires, apart from the goal that hit the goalie’s leg before hitting the post (more about this later).

We didn’t see much of the pre-Showdown game so can’t comment on that, but the game in Launceston provided so many of those head shaking moments that it can’t be let alone.

The television commentary team — and Matthew Lloyd was surprisingly good, we thought — were simply nonplussed at times. Even with the benefit of direct audio feed from the whistleblowers, they were often at a loss to understand why a free kick had been paid.

In one standout incident, a free was paid to Hodge for being held as he was tracking toward the contest. The replay revealed his opponent’s arm brushed Hodge’s arm as he ran past! Rather than basing a decision on what he saw, this umpire had assumed. It’s a continuing trait of the Gieschen-led umpiring department that such decision-making processes are not uncommon at the elite level of our game. Notwithstanding Richmond’s  being massively out-classed and therefore more likely to be holding to restrain opponents, the umpires must see the holding before paying the free kick. It cannot be guessed at.

It’s worth noting too that the modified advantage rule has seemed, thus far at least, to be a sensible addition. The players, especially defenders, seem to have a sense of certainty that hasn’t been there in years past.

Essendon’s announcement that Michael Hurley will be suspended for the pre-season period is, it seems to AussieRulesBlog, an attempt to deflect criticism in the wake of Geelong’s suspension of Matthew Stokes.

The similarities are simply that both are facing Police charges which are yet to be heard. The problem for the Bombers is that the pre-season period suspension may be seen to be a lot too little pain for both Hurley and the club.

We have it on what we regard as good authority that Hurley’s indiscretions aren’t at the serious end of the continuum. It would seem on what has occurred to this point that the cabbie wants his day in court though.

To some extent, Essendon will be damned for being too light by some and for being too heavy by others, loyalties and tribal hatreds probably being the dividing line.

AussieRulesBlog is, as an avowed Bombers fan, comfortable with the sanction. It’s appropriate to the scale of the misdemeanour. The club will take heat from many quarters though and may have been better advised, from a purely PR standpoint, to have included one or two home and away games in the sanction.