Jeff Kennett says AFL needs to combat boring, ugly footy after witnessing a Grand Final that was ‘not a good game to watch’

THE Yellow and Black Army loved Richmond’s premiership win but for the casual fan, was it boring? Incoming Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett thinks so.

Dustin Martin celebrates Richmond’s premiership win. Picture: AAP Images

AFL scoring remained at a historically low level this year and Jeff Kennett on Saturday labelled the game more like the rugby codes than ever.

The league seems more interested in trialling its new AFLX concept in next year’s pre-season than rule changes to ease congestion and boost scoring.

While Richmond’s drought-breaking premiership captivated its fans in a season high on close results, such facts mask significant issues with the look of the game.

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Incoming Hawthorn president Kennett said last week the Tigers’ Grand Final win over Adelaide was “terribly uninteresting” and “not a good game to watch”.

The average winning margin in this year’s finals was 47 points, with scoring over the season at an average of just 89.1 points per team per game.

Richmond celebrates its premiership win. Picture: Getty Images

It was only marginally up on the average team score of 88.7 points in 2016 and 86.4 in 2015, with those scoring levels the lowest since the 1960s.

Scores were high in the opening two rounds, but by year’s end it was back to similar levels to 1968, the lowest scoring season in 50 years.

AFL games also averaged 61.6 throw-ins and ball-ups, with the abolition of the third-man up rule doing little to reduce congestion.

Former Swans, Bulldogs and Suns coach Rodney Eade has urged the AFL to trial designated starting points on the ground in the pre-season, where two pairs of players would be inside the 50m arcs at every stoppage.

Dermott Brereton believes interchange should be only 10 per quarter per team to further fatigue players, create more space and boost scoring levels.

This year Lance Franklin won the Coleman Medal with only 69 home-and-away goals, only four more than the AFL’s lowest winning tally of 65 from Jack Riewoldt in 2012.

Kennett told the Herald Sun on Saturday he stood by his comments to ESPN last week.

“It is a very different game to the one played years ago. It has become more of a scrum and if we end up continuing with this pressure football it is going to be like rugby union or league and I don’t find that attractive,’’ he said.

“I miss the days when you had fast play and players spread around the field.

“It’s not just about Hawthorn but I remember the finals in 2008 and with the three-peat those guys were able to kick the ball six feet off the ground to a fast leading player.

“It was a fascinating game to watch. I don’t mean to be rude to Richmond, who deserved to win but it was a different style of game.”

Champion Data says the gap between scoring from front-half chains and back-half chains has never been greater.

In other words, clubs now rely on getting the ball into their attacking 50m arc and flooding numbers forward to keep it there rather than working the ball end-to-end with precision skills.

Kennett is sceptical about rule changes because he says the league brings them in without trialling them properly in the pre-season.

Dustin Martin celebrates Richmond’s premiership win. Picture: Michael Klein

But a third round of pre-season games could have been full of radical solutions, one of which might have had a considerable benefit in helping the aesthetics of the game.

“We used to trial rules in the pre-season and now they come in helter skelter. One day we will see another team that comes along and plays the game and opens it up and kicks long up the centre,” Kennett said.

“They will run well and handle the ball, but we haven’t seen that for a while. It’s not as attractive a game to watch in my opinion and hopefully that style will return.

“But scrums will always dominate when skills are lower.”

Originally published as Jeff Kennett says AFL needs to combat boring, ugly footy after witnessing a Grand Final that was ‘not a good game to watch’