Shaking footy to the core
Michael Gleeson | December 2, 2008
After 150 years, football's identity is still being shaped.
IF IT ain't broke, fix it anyway. Football is not, by most measures, broken, but it will be fixed.
That was the line delivered last week at a conference for the 150th birthday of the game, and to forecast how the game tackles the next 150 years. The AFL, it can be comfortably assumed, will seek to fix the game. We know this because the advice was offered by Paul Tagliabue, whose role as National Football League commissioner from 1989-2006 ensured he exercised extraordinary influence in the AFL, which has long and unashamedly borrowed from the NFL. Padding and helmets are about the only things not nicked from gridiron.
Tagliabue's theory on fixing what works is that seldom can something not be improved. Football, according to some of the game's most respected figures, confronts an immediate challenge to retain its identity amid its evolution. The rapid rate of change is diluting its uniqueness and replacing it with a pallid version of every other dull defence-oriented, possession-based field game.
The game has also observed the apparent success of rival sports' marketing gimmicks — Twenty20 has caught the eye of young and potential fans. It has made some wonder if a short-form high-energy alternative is worth exploring — particularly in new markets.
Football needs to intervene to stem the pace of evolutionary change. But intervention should only come when the game has decided what it was preserving. Football, former Melbourne coach Neale Daniher observed with some alarm, had never enshrined its most important philosophies.
"We need to identify a core that is sacred and unique that we must preserve in our game. It is amazing that after 150 years we haven't done so in our game and we need to," Daniher said in a key debate at the conference.
"The game is going to continue to evolve and change quicker and quicker so, like any business, you have to know what your product is and what is important to it and you need to protect it.
"We need to stand for something or we will fall for anything, we will be trying to work out what Gen Y wants and Gen Z — then it will be A, B, C and we will be chasing our tails."
The first and most important preserves of the game were those things that made it different and therefore special — the shape of the ball and the four posts at either end.
"We have to keep the beautiful thing, the shape of the ball. The fact it is laced up and bounces all over the place. It is random, it is frustrating, it is unpredictable. That is unique to our game. It is not round," Daniher said.
"What is not core is — I don't care what size the oval is, big oval, small oval I don't care. Might go to South Africa and play on a small oval, it might be a rectangle, I don't care.
"What is non-core is how long we play for. It might be 30 minutes, it might be 60. That is non-core — it can change. But we keep our scoring system.
"We must keep the free-flowing nature of the game, it has got to be constant movement. It has to cater for all shapes and sizes. We don't want a Gaelic game where they are all the same size.
"The game is about attack and defence but what is sacred about our game in our psyche is you must attack. The fans come to watch the attacking players.
"It is physical. It is brave. It is about a contested game and we have got to make sure the mothers are still concerned about their sons playing. Tackling, blocking, screening, big hits — they are sacred to our game. People want to see it a bit gladiatorial. We don't want thuggery, we don't want blokes coming off on stretchers paralysed, but we want it physical.
"It's a kicking game. We want to kick because we want high marks. You can't take high marks unless you kick the thing.
"We want to protect the play-maker. It is what the fans come to watch. The player in front playing the ball is the person we want to protect. The tagger, the scragger — people don't come through the gate to watch someone tag someone out of the game."
According to former Essendon coach, and noted innovator, Kevin Sheedy, change beyond the fundamentals was not only not to be resisted, it was to be embraced. He wanted the draft age lifted from 17, the 50-metre-penalty rule changed to a 25-metre penalty and the bounce of the ball changed from every 15 metres to every 20.
"Reinventing the game is crucial. There might be a rule fitting for today and we should look at it. We changed the size of the bench from two to three to four … the bounce of the ball we changed from 10 metres to 15 metres. Why not 20?" Sheedy said.
"We always felt the mark was the great spectacle and the long bomb and that has disappeared for the present time. But why not give the fans what they want? We really haven't acted on flooding well enough … We had three interchange then all of a sudden four years later four. Well that was great."
Sheedy said women in Sydney had no appetite for rugby league so that was the market to target. He suggested a modified game with perhaps 15 a side, which would also have the virtue of being able to be played on the smaller rugby ovals of the northern states.
For decades Sheedy has considered American basketballers a resource untapped by football. He again reminded that 4000 college basketballers miss the NBA draft each year and are lost to that game, but as yet have not arrived in ours.
International expansion as a necessity for the game to survive and prosper was pressed home by social researchers, and Australia's senior trade commissioner (South Asia) Peter Linford who believed exhibition games played overseas would rapidly be profit-making, and would also offer clubs and the league the ability to engage new business. China and India remained vital.
Sheedy said the first round should be played exclusively overseas. Half-season contracts should be considered for mature-aged players to keep the stars in the game.
"Horse trainers wouldn't race a star every week but we do in our game," Sheedy said.
"Have we got that right? I don't think we do."
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