This is a bit of a challenge – to lament what has been lost from the game whilst not sounding like a whinging old prick pining for the ‘good old days’.
Yep, borderline impossible, but I am willing to give it a crack. I know there will be a fair bit of ‘old man yells at cloud’ about this article. So be it…
Having watched the game for just on 45 years, there are times when what I see now is quite removed from the game I grew up adoring. Some would say it has become sanitised or watered down. Others would argue it has become more professional and slicker. I think there is somewhere in the middle where you get the best and worst of both those arguments, and that is where I sit – I still love the game but I know it is far from perfect. Is it better, or worse? I’m not really sure.
We’re at a point where the AFL has been backed into a corner in terms of the physicality of the game. The bump has been all but outlawed while the tackle is now fair and square in the crosshairs, with umpires erring on the side of caution with anything that even appears remotely dangerous or even aggressive. To me, the removal of some of the gladiatorial aspects of the game has been disappointing, but I know others who love the way things have developed. Potato/potato… that saying really doesn’t work in text, does it?
In my lifetime, umpiring has gone from a one umpire to a four umpire system. And I am not sure it is any better, as we’re seeing less consistency with more pairs of eyes and more interpretations.
We’ve seen the advent of flooding, team defences, the rolling maul, tackling becoming a featured part of the game, and players refusing to kick to a contest, seemingly more content with kicking it to the boundary inside 50 to force a stoppage. For some teams, it is a preferable outcome to having their key forward swamped by the helping team defence.
Yes, it’s a whole new ball game in many respects, and whilst the fitness base and athleticism have undoubtedly improved, and I still watch the game religiously, I really find myself missing some aspects of what the game was.
With that in mind, I am going to drift back down memory lane, using the current rules, interpretations, and trends as a guide as to what I don’t like, and jog the memory with some stuff that I did like.
NO UMPIRES MIC’D UP
Over the off-season, I watched several vintage games. They were State of Origin clashes, back when the rivalry between Victoria, South Australia, and West Australia was at its peak. From there, I segued across into some games from West Coast’s first season in the league, Norwood beating Footscray in a pre-season game, some early 80s games, and finally ended with a couple of Eagles v North Melbourne games from the 90s to further examine the Carey v Jakovich rivalry.
By the way, some of the latter are available on youtube and are well worth your time if you’re looking for a contest where the combatants absolutely get themselves up for the challenge – evenly matched, results switching and changing from game to game… more on that later.
The modern game requires every decision to be analysed and the commentators (some of whom don’t know the rules) need to be informed, as well. But these games I watched didn’t have the umpires running around with microphones attached. Yes, they were communicating with players, but for those playing along at home, you had to use your eyes to decipher what was going – just like being at the ground.
Luckily, to make things easy for us, the umpires used to have a signal for each free kick – get this, just like they do now! So, whilst we didn’t get the umpire explaining that he thought the player “didn’t make a realistic attempt” to dispose of the footy, what we got was a decision paid, a signal given, and we didn’t get the copious amount of chatter.
The upside to this was that we didn’t have to hear a bloke yell “stand” every time someone took a mark or was awarded a free kick. It was great to hear the whistle, watch and uncover what occurred and see the players react. I didn’t need the umpire chirping every five seconds, yelling “play on” when it was apparent that he hadn’t blown the whistle. No whistle = play on. It’s not difficult!
Here’s a proposal for your consideration – keep the umps’ mics on for the production team only. They remain voiceless in terms of the television product unless there is a contentious free kick requiring further explanation. If there is, you have a screen-in-screen option where you can replay the decision, complete with the umpire’s comments. I don’t need to hear him telling the player “you got him high” if we can see the high contact and the umpire has signalled it. I don’t need to hear him telling the players to stay a metre apart in ruck contests if they are already a metre apart (and the players completely ignore that rule, by the way). I just don’t need to hear them all the damn time!
Anyway, it was refreshing not to have my eardrums assaulted by squeaky voices coaching and warning players all the time. Of all the things watching those games offered me, that was one that really stood out.
A GOOD, OLD-FASHIONED DRAGGING
The closest we’ve seen to this in recent times occurred just a couple of weeks ago, when underperforming Gold Coast star, Ben King was subbed out of the game. Or just last week, Maurice Rioli Junior was left sitting on the bench refusing to take Andrew McQualter’s phone call.
Both instances added a bit of theatre to the game, and really, gave the contest a bit of edge, as well.
King was spoken to by Stuart Dew a little while before he was removed from the game, but seeing a star player taken out of the action for “strategic” reasons, as we had it described to us, didn’t do the action justice. King was having a shocker – Dew, in what was maybe his final moment of power at the Suns, gave him one last chance to pull his finger out and when he didn’t, King was outta there, relegated to the back of the bench, wearing a sub’s vest.
I can remember when being taken off the ground was either a disciplinary thing, or due to injury. There wasn’t much in the way of rotations or managed minutes. You played the game and hoped the coach didn’t send you to the bench if you cocked up too badly.
Playing in the seniors when I was 17, I thought “How good is this?”I’m being called up to play with the big boys!” And then the coach started me on the bench and I sat there for the first quarter and a half. No rotation. No spelling some bloke in the forward pocket who needed a breather. It was a great indication of where I sat in this team. Not great for me, I admit, but in hindsight, maybe I needed a bit of a reality check at that point.
At times, I have thought the game is now too nice, and that extends to coaches. The fire and brimstone approach of coaches-past no longer works with players. Hell, it basically caused Jason Horne-Francis to put his contract extension talks with North Melbourne on hold last year.
There’d be no place for Ronald Dale Barassi in the current AFL landscape, that’s for sure!
Players are pretty disciplined these days, but I I always did love seeing the runner come out to a player getting a little too full of himself and tell him the coach said “Get off”.
GAME-LONG ONE-ON-ONE CONTESTS
Circling back for a moment, it is a rare thing in the age of team defences, blocking, and switching, that we get a genuine one-on-one clash for the entirety of the game.
This season, we’ve seen a couple early on, with Darcy Moore taking whoever was the deepest forward, and more recently with Steven May manning up on Joe Daniher for at least the first half (as he switched off him after having his arse kicked).
However, in terms of game-by-game, you’d be lucky to find one or two clashes between forwards and defenders that remained isolated contests for the duration of the match. You might get one or two per round – that’d be it.
Having watched those Carey v Jakovich matches over the off-season, I guess I was kind of spoilt. This was a game within the game; an individual battle within a war, and one pivotal to the outcome. Mick Malthouse backed Jako. Denis Pagan backed Carey. It was brilliant.
I also have fond memories of Stephen Silvagni, Mick Martyn, and Dustin Fletcher taking on full forwards all day long. They were the best key defenders in the game for a reason – because they took the best key forwards.
Those times are long gone, but once in a while, you do get a marquee clash between a name-full-back and a gun full forward. I hope to see a few more as we head to finals.
UMPS NOT TRUSTING THEIR DECISIONS
Goal umpires, this one is for you.
If you think it’s a goal, call it a goal. If you think it’s touched, call it touched. Every single goal is reviewed, they tell us. Every time you make a decision, they’re going to scrutinise it. Why not just use your judgment and make the call?
The number of goal umpires deferring immediately to score review at the moment is holding the game up. It makes you wonder how many decisions on the goal line were wrong back in the day. Call me old fashioned (which I am sure is evident) but I much preferred celebrating a goal within seconds of it going through. Waiting for a minute while the same footage is slowed down, played again, and again, and again, only for the result to be “insufficient evidence… umpire’s call” is unnecessary and robs fans of an experience. It can also halt momentum.
Sure, there will be some that are overturned, but most won’t be. The game will go on.
I’d love to see umps trust their judgment a little more. We’re at the point now where it’s refreshing when it happens.
WAITING FOR THE RUCKMEN AND THE RUCK, IN GENERAL
With ruck nominations (a rule that is completely unnecessary) we sometimes see situations where rucks come running into stoppage situations from 60 or so metres away.
In the Brisbane v Melbourne game on the weekend, Max Gawn and Oscar McInerney were at centre half-forward/back (it doesn’t matter) and there was a stoppage on the wing. The ump called for nominations and far off-screen, Gawn and the Big O nominated.
So the umpire waited… and waited. He just stood there with the ball while the big fellas jogged in to take the ruck duties. All other players at the stoppage stood there awaiting them. Nice of you to join them, fellas!
And I was sitting there wondering why the ump wasn’t throwing the footy up.
Well, he couldn’t, because the stupid damn rule meant he had to wait for the nominated rucks to get there, allowing both teams to set up defensively and therefore doing exactly what the AFL doesn’t want – making it difficult for a free-flowing game to unfold.
Hell, while I am on the ruck, am I the only one that doesn’t understand half the “blocking” calls in those contests? My understanding is that if you use your body to block the opponent and then don’t get a touch on the ball yourself, it is a free kick against. Does that sound about right? I’m happy to be corrected.
Yet, I have also seen instances where one ruck protects the space, wins the tap, and is still penalised for blocking the run of the opposing ruck. Mate… you’re not supposed to give the opposition free run at the footy! As Max Gawn would say, “that’s called ruck craft, big boy.”
The ruck has been a mess for years. They’ve instituted the centre circle (which then meant their shitty bounces were recalled, halting the game again), stopped rucks from taking the footy out of the air under threat of pinging them for holding the ball, only to re-permit it again a few years later by getting rid of that holding the ball stipulation, started this nomination garbage, instituted this one-metre apart thing nobody cares about, and outlawed the third man up, which was actually a good way to clear congestion. Still, free kicks are coming out of ruck contests and the players sometimes have no idea which one of them is getting it until the ump points in a direction.
Part of me wonders if they start permitting blocking and holding in ruck contests, only giving free kicks when the contact is deemed high, whether it would stop these horrible little touch-footy free kicks in ruck contests.
Hell, can it be worse than whatever system they have in place now?
One of the games I viewed in the off-season pitted North Melbourne against Essendon from around 1981-83. It contained a Gary Dempsey v Simon Madden encounter in the ruck. Man… what a joy to watch two blokes who were masters of their craft go at each other with only the most obvious of free kicks paid. A pleasure…
MUD
It might seem strange to someone who has only ever seen pristine AFL grounds to contemplate their heroes wandering off the ground covered with mud, but it used to happen often. After all, this is the winter sport.
But this is not a point about aesthetics – no, I have a bigger one to make, for once.
I have had two people involved in the curation of the ovals contact me over the journey, expressing concern about the firmness of the grounds and the AFL requirements around these levels.
During a time we’d all rather forget – 2020, as all clubs moved up to Queensland for a while, teams had to find a place to train, so suitable venues were scouted. One local curator informs me that someone from the AFL attended a ground he was in charge of and the curator was pretty damn proud of the condition the ground was in. The league rep came out, did his tests and determined that the ground was too soft.
Too soft?
When I had this story relayed to me, the wheels started turning. If the grounds are required to be firm, would that not contribute to the spate of concussions we are experiencing as a result of tackles that take a player to the ground? Are the AFL’s own requirement for hard surfaces to play on, so they can have their fast footy, at least partially to blame for some of the concussions?
I know tackling was a lot less prominent in the game back in the day, but players were barely ever stretchered off due to a head injury in a tackle. We cannot say that now. Maybe grounds that remain a little soft underfoot are a good thing? And maybe the AFL could relax the parameters that make a surface fit for use by the league?
Who knows what impact it could have on head injuries…
I’m sure I’ll have more rants upcoming soon. I am old and grumpy, after all. But in the meantime, if you’re looking for some solid vintage footy, most of the Night Series finals and Grand Finals are up on youtube. Ansett Cups, Sterling Cups, Fosters Cups… the sponsors changed quite a bit, but as the stats are not available anywhere I’ve seen, it is always a bit of a surprise to see some of the stars of the 80s and 90s have some big games in those outings. You just never hear about them.
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