AussieRulesBlog likes Brad Scott. Not as much as brother Chris, but we think Brad is doing a first-rate job for the Kangaroos. But, just like he did when playing, he sometimes has brain fades. Such as the case today.

Today, with the Kangaroos taking on the Cats at Docklands, Brad was coaching against brother Chris. Hopefully all readers are familiar enough with the game to realise that the Docklands stadium has an opening (and closing) roof.

The stadium’s roof is often a cause for complaint. Most often, it’s the blinding contrast — for players, broadcast cameras and punters in the stands — between the sunny bits and the deep shade when the roof is open on a sunny day.

Today we got a new complaint. For some reason, despite a forecast of isolated showers, the powers that be decreed the game between the Kangaroos and the Cats would be played sans roof.

As is Melbourne’s reputation, the sun/shade issues was a factor early in the game, but by the third quarter the weather gods had decided a shower of rain was appropriate. So an oval that sees more sprinklers than it does rain, became slippery.

After the game, which the Kangaroos lost by four (4) points on virtually the last kick of the game, Brad Scott approached an AFL official, apparently to complain that the roof hadn’t been closed to keep out the rain.

What’s up, Brad? Had the game been played anywhere else, there’s no roof to worry about. If it rains, the players play in the rain. Do you think it was the rain that caused one of your players to give away the fifty-metre penalty that ensured you lost the game?

Brain fade!

It happens every year, so we shouldn’t be surprised. The Giesch’s mob have changed the rules again. If you’ve been watching games from the first two rounds of 2013, perhaps you’ve noticed players being thrown to the ground, or hoisted out of packs, after losing possession of the ball?

AussieRulesBlog is sure it was only last year that free kicks were paid against players who hung on for the merest fraction of a second after an opponent had disposed of the ball. What irked up most about that situation was the same ruling was used when the tackle knocked the ball free. On many, many occasions, the tackling player had no way of knowing that the tackled player no longer had the ball.

You’ll also have noticed that the interpretations of push in the back and forceful contact below the knees have softened after only one round!

It’s boring, we know, but why can’t we have the same interpretation applying from the very first bounce of pre-season to the last seconds of the Grand Final? What is so damned difficult about that?

Release the Giesch!

We admit to being a bit of a traditionalist. It was some five years ago that we leapt into the social media world, starting AussieRulesBlog. We haven’t exactly set the blogosphere afire, but we’re quietly happy to have Feedburner indicating 42 (at tonight) hapless souls are linked to our feed.

So, this being the 21st-century and all, we thought it might be time to branch out and dabble in a little Twitter. We often see things in and around the footy that excite or annoy us, but mostly they’re forgotten before we get a chance to blog about them. No longer! (and we’re not sure whether it’s a good or a bad thing!)

Starting tomorrow, if something moves us, we’re going to let the world know — or at least that tiny bit of it that watches our scribblings.

This post wouldn’t be complete without an abject and desperate plea for regular readers to follow us on Twitter. You’ll find us at @AussieRulesBlog. Innovative name, huh?  :-)

There’s a degree of furore over the Lindsay Thomas-Ben Reid incident in the Kangaroos–Barcodes game.

As the game footage makes pretty clear, Thomas makes contact with Reid roughly 10 metres off the ball as Reid chases a North player toward the boundary. In the image above, the ball is shown against the crowd, almost directly above Alan Toovey’s head. It is clearly more than 5 metres from Reid.

Had there not been a head clash, no-one would take a scrap of notice of this incident. Despite the Laws of the Game specifying that a player cannot be shepherded unless within 5 metres of the ball, shepherds and blocks similar to this are absolutely unremarkable.

It’s also unremarkable that the Match Review Panel seems to be working to a different set of standards to the rest of us.

It would be pretty easy to mount a case that we saw the best game for the season in round one on Easter Monday. The Hawks and Cats duked it out before a great crowd, with the Cats maintaining their dominance of the Hawks and getting the cream.

As good as Ablett was on Saturday night, how good was Joel Selwood today? What a player, what a captain!! And Sam Mitchell might not be the spiritual leader of the Hawks, but he is without peer as a pinpoint midfield disposal machine. Some of his foot passes had to be seen to be believed.

For all the great things about the game though, and there were many, there were some key negatives.

How does a player who loses his footing millimetres in front of a pursuing opponent get a free kick when his opponent stumbles over him? The new interpretation of a push in the back is fine if it is a guy laying on an opponent. This wasn’t. This was a rubbish decision, there’s just no other way to call it.

How does a player, already on the ground, roll over and brush an opponent’s shin and get free kicked for a forceful sliding tackle? Another rubbish decision.

Why is a ball dribble-kicked along the boundary for 40 metres penalised for deliberate out of bounds — nonsense decision, especially when the player had no other options available — while another kick down the line, but ten metres from the boundary, which takes a fickle bounce and goes out of bounds is not paid as deliberate out of bounds? Does the umpiring department know that AFL is played with an elliptical ball which has an unpredictable bounce?

Finally, it’s depressing that so many free kicks are for tiggy touchwood contact, but so many more purposeful illegal contacts which seem blindingly obvious are missed.

We expect that the umpiring interpretations will soften in a few weeks, but why do we have to go through this nonsense at the start of every season? Surely someone at Giesch Central can decide on an interpretation which takes into account real world circumstances? Why is it they begin the season umpiring to the letter of the law — and beyond — only to soften that attitude weeks later when there’s been a hue and cry about umpiring? It can’t be that difficult to come up with a middle-of-the-road starting point and follow it for the year!

And, for those who haven’t heard, Jeff Kennett apparently has called for Alistair Clarkson to be sacked at the end of the year after a more than honourable 8-point loss to one of the best teams in the country in round one of the season. If anyone harboured any delusions that Kennett is not a prize idiot, surely this will remove them.

With one game still to come of the opening round, there are plenty of talking points.

• Have the Suns come of age faster than many had given them credit for?
• The AFL seem hell-bent on changing some things, but slow to react to more obvious issues.
• Were the Demons really that bad?
• Are the Bulldogs really that good?
• Two teams playing in vertical stripes and the sky didn’t fall in!

Watching the Suns on Saturday night was an interesting experience. AussieRulesBlog likes to see an underdog succeed, so we were naturally predisposed to be pleased about their performance (and the Saints aren’t our favourite mob). Conditions certainly played a part — no amount of match practice is going to give a properly-hardened match fitness — but without a certain shaven-headed midfielder dragging teammates to the win, the Saints would have cruised to victory.

When the Suns got the sniff of victory, they found extra reserves of physical capacity. Likewise, as the Saints perceived the game slipping away, their lactate-bound muscles tied up even further.

Gazza is really something else. There’s no other player in the competition who could have dragged his team over the line the way he did. He is head-and-shoulders above any other player in the competition. There is daylight in second and third place!

Despite Ablett’s influence, the Suns look to have overcome those second-year blues — as we predicted might be the case — and the recruitment of a few extra hardened bodies has helped to spread the load a little more too.

. . .

The AFL is a curious beast. Hell-bent on changing some things faster than the speed of light, it has to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to recognise issues that are clear as day to the rest of us. This time it’s the fluoro orange uniforms of team runners. Against anyone but the Suns or the Swans (both with predominantly red strip), there’s no problem, but when either of these two are involved there’s a serious issue. This happens occasionally with the umpires’ colour strips too. It seems like someone at AFL house hasn’t put their thinking cap on.

But the AFL’s reaction is to deny there’s a problem. It actually reminds us of the Church of Rome’s doctrine of infallibility.

We highlighted last season the problem of goal umpires wearing navy blue jackets in cold weather. Why are their jackets not a green — or blue or yellow — similar to their shirts?

Let’s hope that Mark Evans can improve on the seemingly muddle-headed analysis of unlamented predecessor Adrian Anderson and take some action to get these issues sorted.

. . .

The Demons have provided the round’s major talking point with their unflattering display against Port. AussieRulesBlog watched a portion of the game on replay and the Dees weren’t totally disastrously bad. It seemed to us to be a matter of effort — they were working at 95% and Port were operating at 102%. In a two-horse race, that difference translates into a chasm.

What’s concerning is turning up to round one and giving 95%. The next few weeks will tell whether the problem is transient or terminal, and the bloke with the responsibility is Mark Neeld.

Port actually showed a bit, albeit against ordinary opposition, that highlights a potential problem for the Demons. What if Mark Neeld is actually a very good assistant coach, as it appears Matthew Primus might be, as it appears Mark Harvey might be? The Hinckley-coached Port looked a much better team than the Primus-coached Port, with not a great change in personnel. What if the Demons have chosen two good assistant coaches in a row to head their footy department?

. . .

As poor as the Demons appeared, the Bulldogs looked great in demolishing a clearly over-confident Brisbane. Who would have thought that losing an ageing star and gaining an ageing recruit could turn a list around? And yet it seems that Brendan McCartney might just have done it. If Brett Goodes down back allows Bob Murphy to play forward, the ‘Dogs could well fulfil the promise that AussieRulesBlog always felt they had.

. . .

Yesterday’s battle of the stripes — Kangaroos versus Barcodes — didn’t result in the end of the world. Just like the Mayan calendar fiasco, predictions of dire results proved fruitless. There was more colour confusion at Metricon Stadium than at Docklands. No need for Argentinean strip for the Roos. Hopefully that teacup can remain storm-free for a good many years now.

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.