An article about Newy and the sub rule.....
Tuesday on my mindBy Geoff Slattery
Wed 06 Apr, 2011TUESDAY is a regular day for AFL players to be wheeled out to face the media. It's far enough away from the previous round, and not too close to selection day, thus allowing for broad discussions, and the occasional debate.
Such a relaxed state allows broadcasters, scribes, analysts, Tweeters, Facebookers, and whoever else is alert to the moment to listen, interpret, and find perhaps a little of the truth of what makes a player, and what views that player has on the game.
This Tuesday after a very broad press conference in which a change of role and expectation was revealed by veteran Port Adelaide performer Chad Cornes, he also let fly on the new interchange rule; later in the day I heard the more measured views of Richmond captain Chris Newman on the same topic.
This was Cornes' position: "I just can't see any benefit in it [the rule] at all. I think it's ridiculous, actually."
On Melbourne radio 3AW, Newman was asked whether he would have supported the concept of a sit-in as a protest against the rule, a concept apparently floated by Essendon captain Jobe Watson, and supported, in principle, on the same radio show by Sydney's Jude Bolton the previous day. Newman's response was a carefully, considered, a polite 'No'.
His connected discussion suggested that all clubs would prefer that the rule had not changed, but that it was causing more stress to the coaching staff than it was to the players. He said: "As a player we have to accept it, and move on."
Newman then noted the key point of this debate that seems to have been lost in all the emotion of the moment: "We have to let it pan out, and see how it goes. Where the AFL takes it at the end of the year, we're yet to know."
Two experienced players, two opposite views.
One has taken the route that has caused many successful companies to fall over - 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'; the other has provided some sense to the discussion, while accepting the view that the reasons the AFL have put in the process of change (reducing congestion, limiting high speed collisions, attempting fairness when injury strikes) are reasonable for any managing body.
Not just reasonable, but fundamental to their multiple roles of lawmakers, keepers of the code, and HR managers to more than 700 players.
There have been other reflections like that of Newman, most notably from four-time premiership coach Leigh Matthews, who put it in very simple terms on afl.com.au recently: "The first significant impact of the new system is that this year footy is a game played between two 21-man sides instead of two 22-man sides."
A basic position, hardly considered in any debates I have heard on this rule: the AFL has returned to the future, by reducing the numbers of players from 22 to 21. Simple really, but overlooked as clubs and coaches attempt to replicate with 21 what they had with 22.
Thus the stress on the coaching and sports science staff: do you pick the same player who would have been the fourth interchange player in 2010? Or is the player a pinch-hitter, able to play short, tall, quick, slow, forward back - if such a player exists?
Or is it the view put forward by Collingwood assistant Mark Neeld, also on Tuesday, that hard runners like Dane Swan may be better to have a week or two off through the year to conserve their energy.
Newman made one other point that should not be overlooked. He noted that he did not believe enough had been done to trial the rule before it was introduced to the premiership season.
The fact is that such a fundamental change of player management cannot be trialled effectively, as the usual trial grounds - pre-season games and practice matches - are always going to be less important than AFL matches.
The decision-making of coaches in a match played for premiership points is poles apart from the decision-making in pre-season matches, whether the NAB Cup or NAB Challenge, even if the decision is notionally the same.
The mere fact that many clubs are using these games as training grounds for their assistants underlines that point.
It is not possible to replicate "the moment" in an AFL match in which the decision to switch a player into the red vest is made, in any environment other than the real thing.
To understand that point is to consider playing a stock market game, in which you "invest" a bank of play money, against that moment when you are using real money, and making the choice to go long on BHP. Only the latter really matters.
The Cornes' position is one taken regularly by those of us who are impacted by change but rarely have the opportunity to have seen the data or to have understood the trends and the reasons why change is imperative.
The role of the AFL has always been to manage change to the way the game is played; even in the earliest days of Australian football regular meetings were held between members of the Melbourne Football Club, then the nominal controlling body, to vary the laws written in 1858.
Many changes were made in that first, evolutionary decade.
That role has extended beyond law-making to include player safety and the way the game is played and viewed - the fundamentals behind the change to the interchange.
The debate will roll on, as these things always do when change occurs. Rounds will come and go, teams will be apparently disadvantaged, 21 will play 21, data will roll in and players will be rolled out.
The season will end, the debate will take another level, and the AFL will do what it must do.
http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/111011/default.aspx
