SA footy legends Malcolm Blight, Graham Cornes and Mark Bickley slam mid-season AFL rule changes

SOUTH Australia’s AFL greats have taken aim at proposals to introduce new rules to selected games before the season is even over.

• Footy legends slam chiefs over rule changes
• How AFL’s radical rule changes will work
• Saints to trial AFL rule changes at training

SOUTH Australian football greats have slammed any proposal to introduce new rules to the game before the season is over, labelling the move a mockery and saying it won’t be a good look for the league.

On Wednesday evening AFL executives met to discuss potential rule changes but ripples of discontent were spread among figureheads and icons of the game.

Australian football Hall of Fame legend and two-time premiership coach Malcolm Blight told The Advertiser the move went against “the grain of the game”.

“I’m not sure why you would need to do it now,” Blight said.

“It just doesn’t smell right, it doesn’t taste right and it certainly doesn’t look right for teams down the bottom to be treated as guinea pigs.

“I know AFL chief executive (Gillon McLachlan) was talking about the integrity of the game but I don’t think it’s a good look. Finish the season and then go through the trials.”

Blight said he was all for changes to the game to free up congestion and to “let the game breathe” but questioned forcing them into the last few games of the season.

“(AFL football operations manager) Steve Hocking and his group have done an enormous amount of work, if they come up with concrete decisions and have courage and convictions to carry them forward I would believe,” Blight said.

“If you are going to make these changes you make them for the right reasons because you’ve got all the data you need.

Malcolm Blight says the timing is wrong.

“In my opinion you don’t make changes to one or two games towards the end of the season. It needs to have been tested tried and true or you just don’t do it.”

Inaugural Crows coach and The Advertiser columnist Graham Cornes said the in-season rule testing made a mockery of the competition.

“Every game means something — even dead rubbers,’’ Cornes said.

“There’s coaching careers on the line, playing careers on the line.

“For the AFL to fiddle with this, it suggests one game is more important than the other.

“There will be a time and a place to trial these new rules.’’

Graham Cornes says it made a mockery of the competition.

Crows dual premiership captain Mark Bickley said the AFL should not even contemplate making the rule changes with games to go in the season.

“I think it speaks to the integrity of the game,” Bickley said.

“One of the reasons they brought a bye into the end of the season was because teams were resting players and abusing the integrity of the game.

“They wanted to make sure that every team played the best they can all the way to the end of the season.

“To have maybe seven or eight games of the round played with one set of rules and the ninth game to have a completely different set of rules isn’t something we should be contemplating.

“To that end, there is the Brownlow Medal and Coleman Medal and lots of other things which rely on all the games being played to the same set of rules and the same standard and I just don’t think you can tinker with that at the end of the season.”

Former Crows captain Mark Bickley suggested using another league as a testing ground for the new rules.

Bickley suggested using another league as a testing ground for the new rules.

“If they are just playing three or four games can we really know that the rules work?” Bickley said.

“How can you really judge whether the rules are the reason for a good game or a bad game when you’ve got such a small sample size.

“We need to give it to another league and watch it for a year, because a year of games is a better sample size.”