What have we learned from the 2019 AFL season?
Another Australian football season ends. There were new rules, the departure of five coaches, the usual controversies and we might have a possible first-time premier. But the main take from 2019 is the need for the game to be fun again.
Michelangelo Rucci
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If one note stands out from Australian football’s 2019 season, it is … very little ever goes to script, particularly in the AFL.
And the season ends with Saturday’s AFL grand final — between Richmond and Greater Western Sydney — at the MCG. The Giants’ first appearance in the grand final in the eighth year of the league’s expansion franchise in western Sydney. Who saw that coming.
So the year ends with either a new name on the VFL-AFL premiership honour board or with Richmond collecting its 12th VFL-AFL flag.
The year began with nine new rules. The expectation was for high-scoring football; the result was defence still ruled with the average total match score falling. In the game of chess between the 18 AFL coaches and the AFL football department, the coaches have called “check” on league football boss Steve Hocking … and left him to commit to no rule change in 2020 in the hope the 2019 adjustments do change the game for the better.
It could be “check mate” next season. The coaching panel to match wits with Hocking — and his AFL think tanks — is to significantly change in 2020.
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After no coach was sacked or resigned in 2018, five of 18 — Brad Scott at North Melbourne, Brendon Bolton, Carlton; Alan Richardson, St Kilda; Ross Lyon, Fremantle and Don Pyke, Adelaide — cleared their desks. It would have been six had John Worsfold opted to resign — in favour of Ben Rutten — as many had expected (and hoped) at Essendon.
The increasing toll on coaches as most evident with Pyke after four years in Adelaide. As retiring Crows utility Andy Otten noted: “He (Pyke) was pretty stressed out towards the end of it …”
The game — repeatedly referred to as an “industry” — found a harder and more damaging tone in Season 2019 for coaches, players and many others caught in the 24/7 vortex of the professional game.
It torments a teenager in his first AFL season for coming up with his own celebration for a goal … Xavier Duursma at Port Adelaide with his arrow.
In losing one of its great entertainers, former St Kilda captain Danny Frawley — at a time when the sport most needed his infectious good humour — Australian football has been reminded at every level that it still should be a game rather than an industry.
Season 2019 started with a group of young women again proving their love for the game is still without boundaries as the third AFLW season closed with the 50,000 capacity at Adelaide Oval strained with the Adelaide-Carlton grand final.
Most notable in Carlton’s rise from also-ran to grand finalist was the telling message of first-time Blues coach Daniel Harford: Have some fun with your footy. To quote full-time nurse Amelia Mullane on Harford’s theme to recharge the Blues team: “He makes it fun and he gets to know you on a personal level. It’s just really good for your footy, because you want to feel comfortable. When he makes that effort to get to know you outside of footy, your footy is going to get better as well.
“He just knows how to go about delivering information and he knows how far he can push you before you break.”
Season 2019 tried AFLX — the modified, quickfire game on a rectangular pitch — with four theme-based teams in the pre-season. It failed … and is gone from the 2020 pre-season while the AFL tries to find a way to put the fast-paced version of Australian football on the international stage. The aim to get Asian billionaires to buy AFLX franchises remains.
As in every home-and-away season, there are surprise packages — and disappointments.
Brisbane was extraordinary. The Lions rose from 15th to second — and then made a straight-sets exit from the finals by failing to convert accurately and efficiently in each of its two home finals at the revived Gabba (while dealing with some bizarre umpiring calls).
As flat as the Lions’ finals campaign became after so much new hope was built in Brisbane, the year reaffirmed the unquestionable merit in Hawthorn premiership captain Luke Hodge’s epilogue. The stories of Hodge’s influence on the young Lions, in particular the leadership group, will grow and probably inspire many other AFL coaches working with “young” teams to seen to repeat the Hodge moment.
One notable episode from Hodge’s early moments at Brisbane was his annoyance in Lions players bringing their mobile phones into the meeting rooms as senior coach Chris Fagan and his staff made presentations. Hodge called a halt to one meeting, asking Fagan and his assistant coaches to leave while the Hawks great told his new Lions team-mates he had not come to Brisbane to waste his time with players who were not attentive and respectful to their coaches.
Adelaide was a major fail, particularly in falling from a finals contender to 11th with just two wins in the last nine games — a collapse that triggered an “external” review and the end of Pyke’s tenure at West Lakes. The fallout will continue.
The biggest disappointment was the fall of Melbourne from preliminary finalist to 17th … and limited heat on the Demons. Why? Where does Melbourne, the game’s oldest club, stand on the relevance chart?
In between the rise of Brisbane and fall of Adelaide and the Demons, the revival of the long-failed Carlton as soon as David Teague took charge as the interim coach has set up the greatest expectation for next season.
At AFL House, score review again proved technology is only as good as the people who use it — and, after some bewildering errors, the AFL finally accepted it needed to invest in better cameras and put “experts” on duty in a centralised review point, the ARC.
Match review officer Michael Christian developed a trend in the second half of the season to hit the players in the hip pocket with fines rather than over the head with suspensions. And didn’t that strategy go terribly wrong with the fine followed by the ban of Greater Western Sydney goalsneak Toby Greene.
Football — and Australia — again had its conscience tested with the release of the so-called “Adam Goodes documentary”, The Final Quarter, that revisited the three tough years that marked the end of the Brownlow Medallist’s AFL career … and his love of the game. As the second Goodes documentary was released, Sydney Football Club chief executive Tom Harley summed up the view along the divide in public opinion saying: “Adam Goodes is a man of the highest integrity and, as a footy club, we love him dearly and we will always support him. It’s unfortunate that there are still heathens out there with a different view.”
Season 2020 is to bring further expansion in the AFLW and the prospect of “snaking” to decide how the 14 teams are split into conferences for the women’s national league. “Snaking” — just wait, all will be explained by the end of October.
There will be a 150th anniversary party for Port Adelaide, the inevitable expectation of the Crows and Power returning to September action; another succession plan with Rutten to replace Worsfold … and join Simon Goodwin in the Neil Craig legacy of former Crows players in AFL senior coaching jobs.
And there will be — as always — the unexpected.