Rejoinders that most Barcodes’ supporters are beetle-browed Neanderthals (see the comments on the linked article) do little to advance progress to a more respectful and courteous atmosphere at Aussie Rules games. Credit where credit is due — Eddie Everywhere is putting the Magpie shoulder to the wheel in the quest for better behaved crowds.

AussieRulesBlog has a rule of thumb which proposes that the value of a fan’s opinions is in inverse proportion to the volume at which they are broadcast. We can’t remember having to revise our rule and its application certainly isn’t restricted to the monocular black and white army. Sadly there are a good number of fellow Bombers fans who demonstrate the paucity of their understanding and wit on a too-regular basis.

The sad truth is that there are knuckle-draggers in every club’s supporter base who make a trip to the footy an uncomfortable experience. For most of the rest of us, the prospect of chipping a (possibly drunken) lout carries more physical risk than we’re willing to undertake, and that is, in itself, part of the problem. We generally avoid confrontation, and so loudmouths get a free ride. No-one pulls them up and tells them to pull their heads in and so their behaviour is validated (at least in what passes for their minds).

Will Nathan Buckley on a video screen exhorting these pea brains to exercise common courtesy make a difference? Highly unlikely. Perhaps the only way to weed them out is for the AFL to employ well-disguised brawlers as ‘mystery patrons’ — akin to mystery shoppers who anonymously check out customer service in stores — to identify and sanction boorish loudmouths.

First target is the Bomber fan on level three at Essendon away games at Docklands who monotonously refers to the umpires as “scumbags” in the loudest voice he can muster. “Boorish”, “loudmouth” and “pea brain” are his good qualities.

The likelihood that Chris Tarrant’s “bump” to shepherd Justin Koschitzke on Friday night will be reviewed by the Match Review Panel has provoked considerable controversy. There’s no question for AussieRulesBlog that Tarrant’s actions were legal. Koschitzke’s head wasn’t hit in the collision and did not make contact with the ground. Koschitzke was not injured in the clash.

Notwithstanding the legality of Tarrant’s actions, AussieRulesBlog questions whether Tarrant’s action was appropriate in the circumstances. Tarrant’s objective in the incident was to delay Koschitzke in his pursuit of Tyson Goldsack. Tarrant’s action was to run, at pace, to intercept Koschitzke at an angle apparently greater than 90º and to aim his shoulder at Koschitzke’s shoulder. The impact to Koschitzke was substantial.

Tarrant could have achieved the same objective by applying a more traditional shepherding movement with his arms spread wide, turning in to run up to five metres behind Goldsack. This action, properly applied, would have prevented Koschitzke from catching or pressuring Goldsack.

It will be an unfashionable view, but AussieRulesBlog thinks that rampant testosterone sanctions inflicting pain and hurt as a more legitimate expression of “a man’s game” than a more gentle, but equally effective, shepherd. Reducing or removing high-impact, head-on type collisions from the game would not be the end of the bump as is regularly asserted in this on-going controversy. Instead, it would signal the end of a culture that legitimises the intent to inflict pain through high-impact collision. The AFL has taken steps to protect players on the mark from high-impact collisions designed to free up the player with the free kick.

By way of illustration of the alternative, in the Essendon–Swans game the previous weekend, Adam Goodes confronted Angus Monfries head on. While it would have been legitimate to apply a hip and shoulder down Monfries’ centre line, Goodes absorbed much of the force of the collision with his arms. Monfries was still put to ground — and thus out of the contest — but was not otherwise inconvenienced.

We think the laws of the game could usefully be altered to define a roughly 45º angle as the maximum for applying a bump in a shepherding scenario. The shepherding player could still be legitimately put to ground and out of the contest, but by a glancing blow rather than an almost head-on collision.

Here at AussieRulesBlog Central we haven’t made a habit of commenting on specific games. We’re testing the limits of that tradition today in drawing from last night’s Barcodes–Saints clash.

It’s not an original thought — we’ve heard a number of radio talkback callers making the point — but we think it has become crystal clear over recent weeks that the Barcodes’ dominance can be explained in one word: fitness.

It’s probably the clearest exposition of the barcodes’ fitness that we’ve had for some time; the most competitive hitout they’ve had to weather, although the statistics for last quarters show it as clearly as anyone could need. Watching the game last night, the power and speed, but most importantly the effortlessness, of the Barcodes’ running was simply irresistible.

Is it the much-vaunted high-altitude training that provides the extra capacity? Frankly, we wonder how long that effect can stay in the body. It’s not like our bodies are not constantly being replaced at a cellular level. There must be a period after arriving at high altitude where the body acclimatises. Once that plateau is reached — if you’ll pardon the pun — there are presumably some benefits in terms of aerobic capacity, but AFL games are not played at high altitude and no AFL team is based at a high altitude, unlike the Denver Broncos, for instance, in the NFL.

Just as there’s an acclimatisation process when arriving at high altitude, we imagine there’s a similar process when returning to near sea level. So, how long might the benefits of the high altitude training last?

AussieRulesBlog thinks the real benefit of the Arizona expeditions might be mental. The Barcodes players believe that they have a physical advantage. Their last quarter running performance contrasted sharply with the Saints last night. Saints players were regularly seen sucking in the big ones. Not so the Barcodes players. They believe they are supermen — and they play like it.

We think the skill and finesse of the Cats might be the only meaningful hurdle to the Barcodes this year. Just as a good big man will generally beat a good small man, we think skill and finesse will trump fitness. Only time will tell.

Regular readers will know that AussieRulesBlog has something of a penchant for scrutinising Match Review Panel assessments. This week we discovered that, for the MRP at least, nothing can indeed be more than something. (This post follows our investigative process.)

We found ourselves bemused that the Barcodes’ Ben Johnson “has no existing good or bad record”. This is a crucial statement because a bad record effectively adds points in the MRP’s assessment system, whilst a good record allows a discount of points before a penalty is calculated.

A bad record is defined as having been “found guilty of a reportable offence or reportable offences or taken an early plea resulting in suspension” within the preceding three years.

A good record is defined as not having been suspended or reprimanded for any reportable offence in the AFL competition or a State League competition associated with the AFL in the previous five years. A good record attracts a 25% discount on base points.

If Johnson, according to the MRP’s own report, “has no existing good or bad record”, we’re quite curious as to how one might gain a good record. Has he been suspended or reprimanded in the previous five years? It’s a fairly black and white question (if you’ll pardon the Barcodes pun). Was he suspended or reprimanded?

We’ve seen this statement before, in connection with newer players if we recall correctly. We’d assumed that a player has to have played for five years to get the benefit of a discount. According to the Barcodes’ own website, Johnson debuted in round one, 2000. AussieRulesBlog isn’t a world-class mathematician, but we make that an eleven-year career, so he certainly has five years’ service up.

In August 2007, Johnson received a six-game suspension (after an early plea). The savants among our audience will have quickly calculated that this incident was a hair under four years ago. The bad record consideration is within the preceding three years. The good record consideration relates to the receding five years. Johnson falls somewhere in the middle. Now we come to the point of decoding the MRP’s semantics.

Johnson hasn’t been naughty in the past three years, so we can’t slap an extra penalty on him, but he also hasn’t kept his nose clean for at least five years, so he can’t claim a discount for good behaviour. Why the euphemisms? Why “no existing good or bad record”?Why can’t they just say he ironed a bloke out four years ago and got six weeks with an early plea?

There will be those who will suggest that the previous offense shouldn’t be raised in the same way that prior convictions can’t be raised during a courtroom trial. That’s all well and good, except that suspensions within the preceding three years are counted and a clean record for the preceding five years earns a discount. So there’s no parallel with the civil legal system.

So, we ask again. Why can’t the MRP just say that he ironed a bloke out four years ago and got six weeks after an early plea and be done with it? To paraphrase British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, there are three kinds of lies: lies; damned lies; and semantics!

AussieRulesBlog is fascinated by the logical inconsistencies thrown up in the discussions on tanking and blowouts. On the one hand, it seems football community opinion is strongly against not doing everything possible to win every game, and on the other there’s a notion that the fixture has to be even further compromised to lessen the number of blowout games.

As we’ve made clear in recent posts, AussieRulesBlog isn’t perturbed by teams maximising their draft opportunities through selection and/or in-game match up decisions. If an opportunity exists, and it’s within the existing rules, clubs would be negligent not to seek to exploit it. We have a generally pragmatic idealistic view of the world, but we think those wringing their hands over so-called tanking are extraordinarily naive.

On the blowouts issue, who would have predicted last year — or even earlier this year — that Melbourne could have crashed to such a low ebb. AussieRulesBlog nominated the Demons, Tigers, Kangaroos and Bombers as the next ‘big four’ based on our assessment of the prospects with their developing lists. How could fixturing have accounted for the veritable white flag performances of Port and the Demons? Simple. It can’t. No-one outside of any club’s inner sanctum knows the true state of the playing list, both physically and mentally, or the capacity of the coaching panel or the patience of the Board or the overall cohesion of the club. Any of these factors can profoundly influence the on-field output of the club.

Clubs will always seek to gain maximum advantage from opportunities presented to them. Some teams will have days when they can do no wrong when playing a team that can do little right. No matter how assiduous the AFL might be in its efforts at equalisation, there are simply too many factors involved for there to be a perpetually ‘even’ on-field competition.

A few words from a departing coach and we’re all off on the chase again — led by that paragon of virtue and honesty, The Rt Hon Jeffrey Gibb Kennett — desperate to label someone as a cheat because they ‘tanked’.

Well, what IS tanking? Here’s a couple of pertinent excerpts from a definition on dictionary.reference.com:

7. Slang . to do poorly or decline rapidly; fail: The movie tanked at the box office.

9. go in the tank, Boxing Slang. to go through the motions of a match but deliberately lose because of an illicit prearrangement or fix; throw a fight.

…

tank "to lose or fail," 1976, originally in tennis jargon, but said there to be from boxing, from tank (n.) in some sense. Tanked "drunk" is from 1893.

…

tv. & in. to lose a game deliberately. : The manager got wind of a plan to tank Friday's game.

From the Oxford dictionaries online:

2 [no object] US informal fail completely, especially at great financial cost.
[with object] North American informal (in sport) deliberately lose or fail to finish (a match).

 

And the Merriam Webster dictionaries online:

2: to make no effort to win : lose intentionally <tanked the match>

1: to lose intentionally : give up in competition

I hope we can agree, readers, that the preponderance of learned opinion is that tanking means deliberately or intentionally losing.

Since much of the tanking debate has focussed on Dean Bailey’s Melbourne, let’s consider some scenarios.

Does anyone seriously contend that Bailey told his players to go out and give less than 100%? Does anyone seriously believe that Bailey would have pulled key players from the ground to turn around a winning position in a game? Does anyone expect any sane person to believe that Dean Bailey instructed his players not to win?

The answer to all is, of course, No. Did the Demons tank? No.

Is it possible to enter a sporting contest with long-term objectives over and above simply winning or losing? Of course it is.

Does anyone seriously suggest that the likes of Jack Watts did not get valuable experience for the future in playing against bigger and stronger opponents? Were those the best possible match-ups on the day? Possibly not. Did they make the difference between winning and losing? Probably not. Will Watts be a better player sooner for having the experience? Probably.

AussieRulesBlog felt for Neil Craig last weekend. It really was the cruellest goodbye.

The team ran out for its first game under former assistant and now temporary head coach Mark Bickley and produced the sort of football that would have saved Craig’s job for him. Admittedly they were only up against the doormats of the competition in Port Adelaide, but it was still a Showdown.

If you fancy a bet — and AussieRulesBlog doesn’t — you could do a lot worse than covering the Demons to either beat the Blues or come within a whisker of it. But, you say, the Cats licked the Dees to the tune of 180-odd points just a few days ago. How can they possibly get up to compete against the Blues.

Well, of course, the answer is simple — the coach was sacked. And apparently the players think the world of him.

We haven’t worried about looking for statistics. It’s happened often enough. Coach sacked mid-season after players give nothing, players play out of their skins the next week.

Yeah, well thanks for that guys. Just a bit @^%$*#~ late!

In the previous post we looked at Melbourne Football Club’s coaches since the famous sacking of the legendary Norm Smith, the Demons’ last Premiership coach.

We were surprised. A radio commentary that Melbourne’s coaches had all been inexperienced, with the exception of Ron Barassi, seems to be quite a way off the mark. It seems there are other reasons for the Demons’ least successful period in their history*.

One year that stands out starkly is 1964, the year of the Demons’ last Premiership. Over the ensuing forty-six years, the club has competed in the Grand Final just twice. With seven first or second placings in seven consecutive years during the fifties (1954–60), expectations — and some might say a misplaced sense of entitlement that has persisted amongst Demon fans — have always been high.

The key event in the wake of the 1964 Premiership was the arrangement to share the MCG with Richmond from 1965. This was a controversial arrangement at the time. As an outsider, we can only speculate on the impact inside the club, but within two years Norm Smith was gone, Ron Barassi was gone and the Demons, it seems, were also gone.

Is it possible that this loss of entitlement to their spiritual home, could so take the wind out of a club’s sails? The MGC has always had an iconic status in the city and, especially through the super-successful fifties, it must have seemed that the club was foredestined, by virtue of its ‘home’ ground in the VFL competition, to almost perpetual success. Seemingly small events may have consequences out of all proportion. Many have argued, for instance, that the Demons lack of on-field fortitude in 2011 stemmed from the forced retirement of popular and respected captain James McDonald.

____________
*
Foundation VFL club, 1897
VFL/AFL Premiers 12 times: 1900, 1926, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1948, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1964
VFL/AFL Runners Up 5 times: 1946, 1954, 1958, 1988, 2000