Who’s the luckiest player in the AFL this week? Probably the Blues’ Jarrad Waite.

If you don’t have Foxtel’s Comedy Channel and you haven’t had a laugh for a while, check out Waite’s Oscar-worthy performance from last Thursday night.

Click the image to view the video. Scroll forward to about 2:50 for the big show.

Why is he lucky? Well, young Jarrad has form. AussieRulesBlog outed him for a very similar incident back in 2010.

A bit of a one-trick pony, is Jarrad. It’s a pity for the Blues that the trick isn’t playing consistent footy.

The first quarter of last year’s season opener was a heart-pumping, hard-running goalfest. Last night’s 2014 season opener began in gripping style, but wasn’t a goalfest in any sense. The Barcodes and the Dockers armwrestled for 30 minutes before the Barcode defence burst asunder like a dam wall and the Docker goals flowed freely.

Over recent years we’ve become accustomed to a Blues-Tiggers opener, and these too have mostly failed to live up to the hype.

After a five-month hiatus, it’s unsurprising that our expectations get ahead of reality. But 2014 has had an extra dimension with the pre-season “challenge” offering few clues as to which teams are up and running and which are foxing.

After game one, one thing is certain. The Dockers are looking ominous.

For the Barcodes, on the other hand, it’s a hard ask to believe that Didak, Thomas, Shaw and Jolley would have kept the dam wall in one piece. Reid and putative Barcode-debutant White wouldn’t have made the difference either.

And it’s clear the Barcode faithful don’t have Foxtel, because they were incensed that the umpires weren’t umpiring to the 2013 “Gieschen” interpretations. The trend begun in the pre-season, with umpires umpiring games as though they are Grand Finals, continued into game one of the home and away rounds.

What a refreshing change to enjoy the football rather than rant and rave about over-zealous umpires!

Starved of genuinely competitive football, AussieRulesBlog has been watching round one of the NRL's 2014  season.

Craig Bellamy is a genius and Cam Smith should be awarded the keys to the city of Melbourne.

The thing that had struck us is the number of video reviews. Apparently there have been rule changes for 2014 designed to speed up the game. Sadly for RL aficionados, whatever benefits may have accrued from the rule changes, the unwillingness of the referees to make a decision on tries means that the game is developing a stop-start nature that no-one can think is good.

There's a lesson here for Mark Evans, the AFL's football operations boss. The crowd and the television audience are fed up with interminable video reviews. We want the officials to make a decision. That's what they're paid to do.

AussieRulesBlog is seeking expressions of interest from suitably equipped entrepreneurs for the secure carriage of mountains of cash to the live AFL games we attend in 2014. We attended our first game of the season this week at the Docklands Stadium and received our usual early-season shock at the “catering” outlet.

The indignity of paying for the equivalent of liquid gold dispensed in plastic cups was reinforced when we sought something to sate our hunger. $5.60 for an “Angus” pie! We can purchase FOUR of these same pies at the online supermarket for $8.27.

How is it that an organisation buying in bulk — the AFL’s “caterers” — can add 170% to the price of the same product in an online supermarket? We assume the online supermarkets aren’t retailing at cost, so there’s already a significant markup built into their pricing structure.

Our companion fared even worse, parting with a princely $9 for an indifferent sandwich that had spent half a lifetime in its packaging.

We’ve already scheduled an appointment with the bank manager to arrange overdraft facilities for our next visit.

Not content with fleecing us for food and beverages, venue management chose to play the game in semi-darkness, with the goals at each end a nightmare of half-shadows — and that’s just for spectators!

Doing their bit for non-existent anthropogenic climate change, no doubt.

Oh, the football? No great heights, but it was a practice match after all.

It’s somewhat amusing that Alastair Clarkson feels it appropriate to comment about James Hird and the supplements program at Essendon.

It was, after all, Hawthorn who in September 2012 were being promoted in The Age as the innovative leaders in using injections to speed the recovery of injured players.

Let’s also remember that eleven or twelve other clubs have been fingered as having run supplements programs not dissimilar to Essendon’s and with the same administrative and governance inadequacies. It was the AFL’s own doctor who made this public.

It’s a reasonable assumption that Hawthorn were among the clubs found to have been nudging the boundaries.

And Clarkson would have us believe he would have stopped Hird in his tracks, had he had the opportunity? Pull the other one Alastair.

And Jeff Kennett’s now-expected ‘rent-a-quote’ does nothing to shore up Clarkson’s position, not least because it’s the coach he wanted to move on a year ago that he’s now anointing as a seer.

Watching the Demons take on the Tigers and the thing we notice most is, paradoxically, that we're not noticing the umpires.

We also caught a couple of quarters of the Hawks demolishing the Lions. Similarly, we didn't notice the whistle blowers.

It's so good to be able to concentrate on the footy. As we noted a few days ago, the new bosses of the AFL's umpiring department look to have stamped their authority on the competition. Good stuff.

The new Demons showed a spirit and composure that was never in evidence over the past couple of years. Plenty for Melbourne fans to look forward to.

For the Tigers it was Groundhog Day. Skill errors were telling. They might tease again without making the transition into a good football side.

Despite the first dumb video referral of the year, the opening game of pre-season is a beauty (for those of us with Foxtel).

But the most remarkable aspect was the almost complete invisibility of the field umpires -- and there were four of them on the field.

Over recent years, we've become accustomed to the umpires blitzing on one rule or another in the early rounds and pre-season, sometimes two. Players, commentary teams and fans would all be bemused.

If this more sensible approach is an effect of the Wayne Cambell and Hayden Kennedy (umpires coach) leadership, AussieRulesBlog is pretty pleased with the result.

The dumb video referral was to check if a ball was completely across the goal line before being touched. Sharp readers will note that the video referral system was introduced ostensibly for just those decisions. Sadly, there have almost never been cameras trained along the goal line, and such was the case at Kardinua Park tonight. Surely the goal umpire must be aware that there are no goal line cameras. It´s a pointless exercise to call for a review.

In the end, we can't quibble overall. It's great to have footy back!

… and all through the house, nothing was stirring, not even a . . .

OK, hang on! There’s a fair bit stirring ‘round AussieRulesBlog’s abode. Less than twenty-four hours until the first bounce of the pre-season.

F O O T Y  I S   B A C K !

We’re pleased that the AFL will be explaining the new rules to fans via the scoreboard. It seems like it’ll only be before the pre-season games, which means many will miss it. But it’s a step in the right direction. Hopefully the broadcaster(s?) will pick up the ball and show the explanations to their viewers.

If we could send a message to Wayne Campbell, the AFL’s new umpiring department boss, it would be to be proactive in getting information out to the football public. Most fans won’t order a DVD, or search out the labyrinthine explanations of interpretations favoured by The (unlamented)Giesch.

The message needs to be simple and unequivocal. Most importantly, it needs to be reinforced out on the field by the way the umpires officiate the game — every game, every month, from the first bounce tomorrow night to the last bounce on Grand Final day.

We don’t care how wrong the decisions are. Just give us that consistency. No doubt the players will be crossing their fingers for that too.