EFL 2019: Eastern Football League coaches question effectiveness of new kick-in rule
The Eastern Football League has introduced a swag of new rules, but four of the competition’s leading coaches have questioned the effectiveness of one of the new initiatives.
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Four of the Eastern Football League’s leading coaches have questioned the effectiveness of one of the competition’s new rules.
Players will no longer be required to kick the ball to themselves at kick-ins and will be free to run straight out of the goalsquare.
The man on the mark will also be positioned 10m from the top of the square.
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However, players will still have to wait until the goal umpire finishes waving the flag for a behind before they can play on.
The new kick-in rule, along with a host of other initiatives, have been introduced with the intention of increasing scoring and promoting an attacking style of play.
Players in rival leagues can play on before the umpire has finished waving the flag.
The AFL first removed the need for a player to wait until the goal umpire completed waving the flag in 2006.
Balwyn coach Rodney Eade was one to question how effective the new kick-in rule would be.
“The point kick-in probably won’t have much impact — you get a little bit of extra distance when you want to go long — but you’ve still got to wait until the umpire waves the flag,” Eade said.
“There is going to be no advantage, like in AFL you can go straight away so I think that circumvents that a bit.”
Eade said the “EFL had done the right thing taking these rules that have been brought into the AFL” but the competition’s smaller grounds would naturally promote congestion and make scoring difficult.
EFL chief executive Troy Swainston said the league wanted to ensure scores were correct at the end of the game, rather than allowing players to play on immediately after a behind.
He said the league would be open to a review of the kick-in rule in the senior men’s competition, where there are paid umpires.
“I don’t want disasters at the end of a game where one goal umpire is out by a point because he wasn’t signalling and the game didn’t stop to make sure the score wasn’t recorded and correct,” Swainston said.
“In terms of the free-flowing, it’s still going to be open, you’ll be able to kick the ball further and the ball is going to spend more time in the widest part of the ground because you’re going to be able to get the ball out of your backline.”
Blackburn coach Brendan Allen said the EFL was “still behind the times in that we’ve got to wait for the flags”.
“It’s an interesting one in the sense that that’s what the rule is intended to do — quicken everything up — but we’ve still got to wait for the flags,” Allen said.
“If someone boots the ball through the points, it’s flicked back, you’ve probably got 10, 15 seconds … it gives you a fair bit of time (to set up defensively).”
Allen, a former Sandringham Zebras assistant, said if players could play on without waiting for the flag to be waved it “could have a major impact really quickly”.
“It allows you to get in a scoring position a lot quicker and if you’re organised and coached well, you can really gain an advantage offensively,” he said.
Rowville coach John Brown said the EFL had missed an opportunity to “introduce a great new kick-in rule that’s come from the AFL, but the key part of that fluency is to be able to play on directly from a point”.
He said he had expressed his views to Swainston.
“I think the new rule is great with the 10m advantage but there is no advantage in play if we’ve still got to wait for the umpires to wave the flags,” Brown said.
“We’ve got a great new kick-in rule but they’ve still allowed us to clog it up because we’ve got the time to wait for the umpires to wave the flag.”
Two-time Noble Park premiership coach Mick Fogarty said rules should be streamlined across local leagues as to avoid any confusion.
“We’ve got VFL players, like most EFL clubs … they come from that environment where the rule for them is they don’t have to wait for the flag but then they come to us and they do,” Fogarty said.
“If we’re going to follow some rules, just make it all the same. You either go the whole hog or you don’t change it at all.”
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