Sport Thought: Diary of the on-field game records emerging problems
Dear Diary,
I've lately been reading some of the stuff I've penned through the years to see if any of it still makes sense. Now that the AFL is confronting the fact that the on-field game needs help, I thought it might be interesting to go back and examine the views I've expressed over time.
You see, as far back as the 1990s, I felt it was becoming apparent Australian football's laws needed an overhaul. But at that stage I'd committed no such thoughts to print. Then I got started.
From a 2005 entry – that's 13 years ago – there's this: "The reason umpiring needs attention is that our indigenous code of football is being changed for the worse before our eyes."
This was elaborated upon in 2006, with one specific bugbear in mind. Fewer free kicks were being given to the ball-player, prompting the observation: "(Unpaid free kicks) influence the speed and the care with which players approach contests. Liberal umpiring has changed the game."
This wasn't intended as an attack on umpires. Rather, it was an attempt to shine a light on prolonged administrative neglect. The game itself is the AFL's core product, but through an extended period of the modern era you wouldn't have known it.
While one understands that the massive changes of the 1990s and beyond were a distraction to the administration, inattention to the fundamentals was inexcusable.
In the football department, there were cosy – but too often inadequate – senior appointments. There was also serial crisis management. There was, thus, a lack of proper oversight and an attitude of never confronting today what could be put off until tomorrow.
Crisis management?
An example: from a 2014 entry, written about the ever-problematic holding-the-ball rule. There was reference to an incident in a tight Port Adelaide v Essendon match in which Port's Angus Monfries spilt the ball upon being tackled, wasn't penalised, and a teammate swooped to kick a goal. It could have affected the result of the game and there was controversy.
That was on a Saturday night. By Monday, The Age carried a report of a planned post-season "Holding-the-Ball Summit"! Those gurus of all on-field matters – the coaches – would be invited to help umpires and the rules committee sort it out.
Apart from the knee-jerk reaction, the coaches were a too easy, and flawed, source of counsel. All they ever seem to want is more reward for the tackler.
As for the congestion this causes – which lately has brought matters to a head – it was clearly visible a decade ago. In 2008, I wrote of "the real enemy of a continuous game: the team, and players, who at every opportunity seek to grind it to a halt". In 2009, there was reference to the now departed Hall of Fame member, Ken Hands. My description of his sentiment was that "the legitimisation of game-clogging gang tackling has diminished his affection for the sport that has been such a big part of his life".
The same diary entry sought to remind anyone caring to take notice that the traditional interpretation of the laws used words like "protect", "encourage", and "ball player" in the same sentence. Alas, these became subsumed under – and negated by – the concept of something called "prior opportunity".
At last, dated 2012, I found this: "There's a compelling reason why the current trend towards endless ugly packs can't be allowed to continue: football matches are television programs." And six years later, in 2018, the penny dropped ... along with the television ratings. Not necessarily in that order. For, as we know, nothing concentrates the AFL's mind like money.
There is now, though, an emerging rival for the administration's attention. If the current, lucrative television rights are the realisation of the game's financial dream, the issue of concussion is its potential nightmare.
A 2011 entry quoted from the AFL statement of new concussion guidelines thus: "A club can expect to receive 6-7 concussion injuries per season." With 16 teams then in the competition, that computed to about 100 concussions per season.
This year, the concussion-per-club number was put by the AFL Medical Officers at seven. With 18 clubs, that's about 130 brain injuries – of varying degree – per year. This is in a workforce of approximately 800!
An entry from 2013 noted a contribution to that week's letters to The Age. Dr Ian Haines wrote: "The game has changed dramatically; it is no longer appropriate to have up to 36 super-fit and large-bodied players on the field together due to the inevitably large number of high-speed collisions. Rule changes should include ... slowing the game by reducing the number of interchanges."
Kevin Bartlett would, of course, be quick to dispute that Dr Haines was first to raise the issue of interchange rotations. As would Brett Burton, former president of the AFL Players' Association and from a background in the human movement area of sports science. Burton had expressed concern as early as 2010, observing that players were being forced to operate at "higher speeds, with a stop-start action, as well as encountering higher impacts more often".
So, there you have it. A quick flick through the pages of time. Actually, I should come clean: these are excerpts from columns I've written for The Age and The Sunday Age since 2005.
They are drawn upon now because I've found it increasingly frustrating to witness the deterioration of the game's spectacle through a time when the skill of players was advancing spectacularly.
And I've done it to raise the question: if I, and the many others who experienced similar frustration, could sense emerging problems, what were those paid to manage the game doing about it?
Anyway, that's it for now. Happily, September's upon us and I'll correspond again after the grand
final.
Your dutiful diarist.