AFL will assess new rules for another season
Nine new rules were introduced in 2019 in a bid to break the game open. Scoring dropped to the lowest in 50 years, but the AFL has promised no more rule changes — for now.
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The AFL will allow its new rules to evolve into a second season as it vows not to tinker with the game leading into 2020.
AFL football operations boss Steve Hocking says there will be no new rule changes despite the league’s bid to lift scoring falling flat last year.
The game was seen to be much more open and the ball movement much improved and yet the average team score in the 2019 home-and-away season was only 80.4 points.
It was the lowest scoring season since 1967 (78.8 points per team) although the rate of scoring declined from the previous year after nine rule changes before the season.
They included the 6-6-6 starting positions after goals and players being allowed to play on directly from behind kick-ins.
In other changes, ruckmen didn’t lose prior opportunity if they grabbed the ball from a ball-up or throw-in and there was a bigger exclusion zone when players won a 50m penalty.
The rule changes were not designed only to lift scoring, but the league would have hoped a flow-on effect would have been stopping the trend of declining scores.
Hocking said the league wanted to analyse the game for another season under the new rules.
“We are not going to change any on-field rules, we are going to let the game settle and breathe,” he said.
The AFL unapologetically rewarded teams that scored well in its fixture last week, with the Lions and Western Bulldogs involved in nine prime time fixtures in 2020.
But while there was easier ball movement under the 6-6-6 set-up, teams began to fear turnovers so much they kept the ball in hand with chains of kicks rather than risking attacking through the corridor.
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Melbourne will hope to improve its game style after dropping 33.2 points per week from 2019 to 2018, the largest drop in AFL-VFL history.
The Tigers again won a premiership through a unique forward-handballing, high-pressure style, twice kicking 100 points in three finals victories.
They kicked a remarkable accurate 18.4 (112) in their qualifying final win over Brisbane, then 17.12 (114) to the Giants’ 3.7 (25) in their 89-point Grand Final victory.
Originally published as AFL will assess new rules for another season