If the cap fits ...
Charles Happell
Written on Monday, 04 March 2013 08:00
A word here in support of Kevin Bartlett, the AFL Laws of the Game Committee and, more generally, the game of football itself.
Bartlett's committee, which has proposed a cap on the number of interchange rotations each match, has copped a forearm jolt from a range of coaches, headed by Mick Malthouse, Alastair Clarkson, Brad Scott and now Mark Neeld. In fact, I can't think of one coach who hasn't given Bartlett and co a whack for their bench restriction plans, which are now being trialled in the NAB Cup.
The coaches' beef is that such a move is not player-friendly, that it will make players exhausted and therefore more prone to injury.
Malthouse has gone further than that at the weekend, effectively accusing Bartlett of being a control freak, hijacking the debate and insinuating the former Richmond champion is too old to understand the 'modern game'.
Well what a joke. What a load of self-serving tosh.
Malthouse and his 17 other mates brandishing clipboards and headsets have little interest in what's best for the game, or in its aesthetics or whether it's a free-flowing spectacle or an all-in, Wrestlemania meets British Bulldog. What they are interested in solely is their team, and how it performs.
Which is fine. That's their remit and that's what they're paid for.
But, Malthouse, Clarkson and co shouldn't claim they speak for the vast majority of football fans who are sick to death of the rolling mauls, the congestion, the 30 players jostling for position around the ball, the endless ball-ups in the same position, the interchange steward marshalling traffic like a policeman at the Ginza, players sprinting off after kicking a goal, all the emphasis on the negative.
Because they don't; they speak only for themselves.
There were 54,400 interchanges made in 2012 - at the rate of 262 per game, or 131 per team. In one game, Gold Coast made a season-high 176 rotations against Collingwood. In 2008, that average figure was 80. So, in four years, we've seen a 63% increase in the number of interchange moves.
Stoppages, not including centre-square bounces after a goal, averaged 66 per game in 2012, a huge increase on the 51.5 in 2008. In last year's grand final alone - lauded by some as a contest for the ages but, in the cold hard light of day, more a stop-start affair devoid of individual brilliance - there were 95 stoppages: 51 ball-ups and 44 boundary throw-ins.
It wasn't so much a free-flowing affair as a game afflicted by a major case of constipation. Not so much a spectacle as an eyesore.
The contest only confirmed to Bartlett the need for restrictions on the bench. ''Interchanges have hijacked the game. It's outrageous and has got completely out of hand,'' he said. ''It has got to the point now where the game is is becoming like rugby. It's not an indigenous game of Australian Rules football any more.''
But the season finale was hardly a blip. This is how the game has been evolving for five or six years now.
Of all the modern rule changes, the one that has had the greatest affect on how the game is played is the expansion of the interchange bench to four (now three plus a sub). This means players get enough rest throughout the game that they're able to go helter-skelter when on the field. The concept of tiredness and fatigue becomes, by the standards of yesteryear, almost redundant. A cap of 80 or 90 rotations will mean a player's stamina is now as important as his speed.
As to the coaches' fears about player fatigue, Bartlett said it was nonsense that players would get too tired under a restricted interchange arrangement, saying sports scientists and boffins had spooked everyone. Bartlett said VFL players in the 1960s and 70s used to work full time ''and dug ditches'' and still managed to play out matches at the weekend - when there was no interchange bench (until 1978), just a 19th and 20th man.
So, for the coaches to start bleating - it is their second language, after all - that their players will start collapsing with fatigue is a furphy, and should be paid no attention.
(Malthouse, too, was way out of line in singling out Bartlett for his weekend spray. For a start, three recently retired players - Brett Burton, Joel Bowden and Michael Sexton - and a current player, Beau Waters, also sit on the Laws of the Game committee, not to mention another fairly well-credentialled bloke you might have heard of, a certain L Matthews.)
So as a footy follower with no particular allegiance to Bartlett, Richmond or the AFL, I say: more power to your arm, KB. Don't listen to the carpers, whiners and whingers; put a cap on those interchange rotations, and pull it on nice and tight.
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