Hall of Fame Legend Malcolm Blight to work for AFL on saving “look of the game”

THE “Messiah” Malcolm Blight has agreed to answer an AFL call to review the look of Australian football.

HALL of Fame Legend Malcolm Blight will answer an SOS from AFL House to save Australian football’s on-field image amid alarming concerns for the “look of the game”.

Blight will sit with a group of other leading figures - such as fellow Legend Leigh Matthews - on June 7 to review how Australian football can overcome its damaging new trends, in particular with congestion.

“We have to get back to the fundamentals of our game, not those of others,” Blight told The Advertiser last night.

AFL football boss Steve Hocking made his appeal to Blight late yesterday to join the greatest “think tank” on the game’s future. It is uncertain how the gathering of the game’s greatest achievers and minds is to work alongside Hocking’s new 12-person “competition committee” made up of club presidents, chief executives, football managers and players including Crows chief executive Andrew Fagan and Port Adelaide football chief Chris Davies.

The “messiah” of Adelaide’s AFL premiership dream in 1997-98, Blight quickly accepted Hocking’s appeal to save the game from an internal demise. The new group of thinkers is expected to involve eight to 10 people not directly tied to the 18 AFL clubs.

“I’d love to be part of ridding the game of my pet hate - 36 players in one-quarter of the field,” Blight said. “That is not our game.

“And it is from that congestion that all the other problems in our game come - higher injury counts, concussion. It is time to open up the game again.”

Malcolm Blight with Adelaide Crows premiership captain Mark Bickley. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

Blight did not pre-empt the June 7 meeting by detailing his salvation plan for Australian football.

And the Brownlow, Magarey and Coleman Medallist is not playing the blame game with modern coaches who have worked tactics from other sports to dramatically change Australian football.

“The coaches are playing their role of getting the best out of their teams and doing whatever it takes to win,” said Blight, a former VFL-AFL-SANFL coach with North Melbourne, Woodville, Geelong, the Crows and St Kilda.

“The real issue is with the rules - and the changes that are made to the rules.

“As a player (in the SANFL at Woodville in the late 1960s), I saw one rule change - penalising any kick that went out-of-bounds on the full - dramatically influence how the game was played. It changed the spectacle of Australian football (by stopping defenders pinned the ball to the boundary by kicking the ball out of play without instant penalty).

“That was huge for our game. And there was more with the diamond and centre square (ending congestion at centre bounces).”

The follow-up to the 1970s response to congestion with the short-lived diamond and then the 45m square around the centre circle is to consider zones that demand team keep a minimum number of players in the forward-50 arc.

Unlike Blight, Matthews does put the blame for congestion on today’s AFL coaches.

“Everything going on in footy about the on-field game is a product of the way the coaches want to coach their players to play,” Matthews said.

“The game has to try to reduce the coaches’ ability to tactically change it.”

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