Australian football might be better off by removing recent rule changes rather than adding new ones

DEBATE on fixing the “look of the game” in Australian football might need to focus on removing recent changes rather than creating new rules.

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AFL football boss Steve Hocking’s original think tank — made up of club and game leaders rather than the outsiders such as Malcolm Blight — meets next month to thrash out more potential rule changes.

Hocking says this meeting is to “analyse data and feedback received during (a) two-month period around how the game may deal with on-field congestion at the elite level.”

There have been two experimental games — one at Etihad Stadium with Hawthorn two weeks ago and another with Brisbane at the Gabba this week — to work proposed rule changes such as starting positions, last-touch at the boundary and an expanded goal square for kick-ins from behinds.

There will be change to the Australian football game next season with new rules and new interpretations.

AFL football boss Steve Hocking’s committee to solve congestion in Australian football meets again next week. Former Port Adelaide fitness coach Darren Burgess suggests a cut on interchange rotations could be an answer to the game’s problems with congestion. Picture: Sarah Reed

But it might be time to consider removing some recent rule changes that have become ugly tack-ons, such as the 31-year-old interchange system that replaced substitutions (by two reserves) with rotations from the four-man bench — first uncapped and now restricted to 90 a match.

There is this interesting observation from former Port Adelaide fitness coach Darren Burgess, who has moved between Australian football with the interchange system and world football that remains with substitutes.

“Basically,” said Burgess of the current AFL game, “you have all of the forward line being asked to sprint back and defend and then sprint forward when they have the ball or get a turnover.

Darren Burgess makes a return visit to the Portress to keep an eye on proceedings with Chris Davies. Picture Sarah Reed

“If you reduce the rotations,” added Burgess on his return to the Power last week on a flying visit from English Premier League Arsenal, “players would be physically unable to do that (continual sprinting back and forth to congested packs).

“Then they would have to make a choice — either come back to defend and not be able to get forward and not have someone to kick the ball to.

“Or stay forward — and that would be the option most coaches would choose.”

There is a great divide in the debate on the power of turnstiles at the interchange gate.

If — as former AFL Commission and Carlton premiership captain Mike Fitzpatrick had wanted — there is a major clawback of the interchange system, would players be subject to more fatigue and soft-tissue injuries?

How would AFL coaches, list managers and recruiting scouts change the profile of their ideal AFL player? Endurance would be paramount, perhaps at the expense of speed. Is a slower AFL match better when Hocking has been charged with enhancing “the look of the game”?

Would a bigger clamp on rotations — say to 40 a match — force coaches to keep players in old-fashioned positions, opening up the rather than running from contest to contest create congestion in one-third of the field?

Could Australian football successfully return to the substitute system, say with six on the interchange bench to cover both injuries and any tactical change a coach wishes to make?

Premiership coach Leigh Matthews, one of Blight’s colleagues on the “outsider think tank”, argues there is not a rule added to the Australian game in the past 20 years that has been a bad move for the game.

But if there is this belief the game was better 40 years ago, perhaps stripping the recent tack-on rules might be more powerful than finding new rules.

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