Can Australian football afford to have different rules at differing levels of the ‘national game’?

AUSTRALIAN football is on the path to new rules for the AFL competition. But what of the other tiers of the ‘national game’? We could see three different versions of the game within a 10-kilometre radius in Adelaide next year.

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ONE football code is played to the same rules if there is a match in Barbados or Bangladesh.

Yet another version of “football” could be different in three matches unfolding at the same time within a 10-kilometre radius in Adelaide next year.

So much for the “national game” or “Australia’s game” with Australian football.

The AFL has pre-declared there will be rule changes next season — and four field umpires to police them. The confirmation is to come no later than October.

The SANFL is uncertain if it will follow suit. The political battles between the SA-based AFL clubs, Port Adelaide and the Crows, and the eight traditional SANFL clubs — that have a default position to resist AFL themes — is destined for a mighty row in the next fortnight.

And at community level with the Adelaide Footy League — formerly known as the amateurs — there will be no rule change next season. At best, the grassroots game will consider following the SANFL on the “last possession” rule at the boundary.

“But for 2019, we will be ‘as is’,” said Adelaide Footy League chief John Kernahan.

Adelaide Footy League boss John Kernahan.

An Adelaide Footy League match between Kenilworth and Hope Valley. Footy fans could be presented with three different forms of the game next year. Picture: AAP Image/Morgan Sette)

So on a Saturday in Adelaide next year, you could watch a community game at Thebarton Oval with one rule book, a State League match at Norwood Oval with another and an AFL game at Adelaide Oval with such radical rules as starting positions.

“We are not compelled to administer the game as the AFL does,” Kernahan told The Advertiser. “We are open to change at our level if we regard the rules are helpful to our code and its participants.

“We’d imagine the rules being considered by the AFL are to deal with what happened with full-time, professional football … not what we see in two hours of footy in the suburbs.”

But the consequences do fall all the way to the grassroots. The AFL wants four field umpires — where will they come from?

“The talent pool is drained at our level (of community football) as the SANFL seeks replacements for those umpires who advance to the AFL,” says Kernahan.

And where is the Adelaide Footy League to get four umpires for each of its matches if the rules demand the match official monitor the players’ movements to starting positions or zones?

“We won’t be changing rules until they are thoroughly assessed,” Kernahan reiterates.

So one sport — the so-called “national game” or “Australia’s Game” — will be like the old railways with trains running on different gauges.

A soccer player could travel the world in 2019 playing in three leagues and never be in doubt as to what rule book the referee is reading. Yet a sports fan could watch three Australian football matches on the same day in Adelaide and be totally confused by 10.30pm.

AFL football boss Steve Hocking might be empowered to save the AFL circus with rule changes. But the game’s guardians at the AFL Commission have to look far beyond the elite level to understand how rule changes echo across Australia.

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