the bloody australian news paper had this to say!!!
what a bunch of effin morons!!!!!
Australian footbrawl
Chip Le Grand
February 24, 2006
AS a new football season begins its round-robin prelude, a bitter divide has emerged between those who coach and play in the AFL and those who adminster the national competition.
For all the riches soon to be poured into football via the new broadcast rights deal, it is not a dispute over money. Nor is it a feud over territory, scheduling or sponsorship. This time, it is something of far greater importance: the game, its rules and the direction in which Australian football is heading.
On one side of the great divide are Paul Roos, Mick Malthouse, Mark Thompson, Grant Thomas, Terry Wallace, Dean Laidley, Chris Connolly and Neale Daniher. All senior coaches who have expressed concerns about the manner in which the new rules have been introduced and their potential impact on the game.
This week, they have been joined by a chorus of players led by Brisbane captain Michael Voss, who feel the AFL has fiddled enough with the rules and it is time to let things be - "to keep the game settled for a few years", as Voss put it.
On the opposite side, there is the commission, chief executive Andrew Demetriou, his football operations manager Adrian Anderson and the laws of the game committee that Anderson chairs.
The 2005 season finished with record attendances, record club membership and a record national television audience. It also finished with the AFL executive convinced the game had reached a defensive nadir and that significant tinkering was required.
The result of that mindset - and the diligent work of the laws of the game committee - was three rule changes and seven new interpretations for the 2006 season. Of these 10 changes, six are intended to speed the flow of play.
The changes were approved without consultation with the coaches and announced the day before the national draft. For the clubs, anger at being snubbed has given way to confusion over what the changes actually mean.
The episode has fuelled a growing mistrust between some of the competition's leading coaches and Demetriou's administration. Having been left in the dark about the proposed new rules, coaches such as Malthouse and Roos suspect a hidden agenda at work.
"Don't stand up there and tell us how great the game is and on the other hand tell us we need seven rule changes," Roos told The Australian this week. "When pretty much everyone I have run into believes last year's grand final was one of the best we have had for 20 years, and the AFL itself is saying it rated well, there must be another reason for the rule changes.
"The game has evolved and will continue to do so, so what are we trying to get it to? To me, it looks like there is a clear mandate to take it in a certain direction. What is that direction and why are we doing it if everything is going really well?"
Though Roos has the loudest voice on this issue - and the most at stake given the manner in which his team won last year's premiership - he is not alone in questioning the AFL's motives.
Malthouse derides the new kick-in rule, which enables players to restart play without waiting for the goal umpire to wave the flag, as "that stupid rule".
Laidley believes the AFL gave insufficient consideration to player safety in reducing the amount of on-field rest time. Thompson agrees with Voss that it is time for the rules to be left alone.
"I don't think the game has any problems at all," Thompson said. "We shouldn't keep trying to predict how the game might be played in three or four years. Everybody is happy how the game is going now."
There is plenty of self-interest and ego behind the coaches' concerns.
Foremost, Roos doesn't like the new rules because if they work as intended, they will make it more difficult for his team to win. This is why it would be unsuitable for a working coach to sit on the laws of the game committee, and why the power to change rules should never rest directly with the coaches.
Kevin Bartlett, a 400-game player, former coach and long-serving member of the laws of the game committee, believes it is coaches who wield the real power over the direction of the game through strategies and tactics. The role of the committee is that of watchdog.
"It is in the hands of coaches, how the future of the game will unfold," Bartlett said.
"They are the ones trying to win the game and who will always try to bend the rules to get a perceived advantage.
"Coaches created flooding and tagging because they are trying to get an edge and an advantage for their team. That is their job.
"Those who are on the AFL commission and the rules committee, their job is to keep a leash on it all."
There is also a poor understanding among the coaches of how the laws of the game committee operates.
Those who have sat on the committee describe it as democratic, open and thorough. It is conservative, if you consider the sum total of recent rule changes compared with some of the more radical ideas proposed by senior coaches. "If we had implemented half the things that have been suggested to combat flooding, you wouldn't recognise the game," Bartlett said.
And it doesn't have the final say.
In criticising the new rules, Malthouse this month questioned why the committee had failed to replace the bounce with a ball-up around the ground. For the past two years, the committee has recommended such a change but the commission has exercised its veto.
As individuals, coaches like Kevin Sheedy, Leigh Matthews, Denis Pagan and Malthouse are among the most influential figures in the game. As a collective, they are a poor lobby.
The coaches last year had a nominal representative on the committee in Stan Alves, a former coach. He has since relinquished his post, frustrated by poor communication between the committee, the coaches association and the coaches.
Yet beyond these caveats and shortcomings, there is genuine concern among coaches that this year's rule changes are unnecessary, ill-conceived and may affect football in a way the rules committee and commission did not intend.
Bartlett told The Australian that concern about flooding was a key factor in the committee's deliberations. In official AFL parlance, the new rules were introduced to make the game more "continuous". In real terms, they are about making football more attacking, higher scoring and more difficult to defend.
In other words, the changes are being driven by a subjective, aesthetic agenda about how football ought to be played.
Where do you sit in this debate? The litmus test is last year's epic grand final between Sydney and West Coast. Was it really a great game, as Roos contends, or merely a great contest? The AFL and its laws of the game committee saw it as a great contest.
But here is the rub for the AFL: even if it is right about how football should be played its rule changes may still be wrong.
Although flooding was identified as a tactic as far back as the 1996 grand final, there is still no consensus about which teams flood, how often and by what means.
Sydney maintains that its own style of tempo-controlling defence is the antithesis of flooding because every possession is contested. Western Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade, the father of flooding, can recite half a dozen different variants of the one tactic.
The most direct assault on flooding within the new rules is changes to the kick-in. Modelling done by Adelaide researcher Kevin Norton suggest that on average, the option to immediately restart play will slow the speed of the game down, on average, by 1.5 per cent. This is based on the assumption that less rest time reduces the average running speed of players and movement of the ball.
This, in turn, should make it more difficult for players to cover the ground required to flood.
The counter argument, one put forward by Roos, is that flooding had already receded through the evolution of counter-tactics.
Roos believes the best answer to flooding is the possession game - as perfected by Port Adelaide in its 2004 premiership year - and rules intended to assist fast-break football will only increase the tendency of teams to establish defensive zones behind the ball, flooding in its basic form.
This was the view expressed this week by Geelong's Cameron Mooney and yesterday by Collingwood defender James Clement. "Once again they have tinkered with the game and they might have created a monster," Clement said. "Just give up that first kick and flood back."
Adelaide midfielder Kane Johnson said the cumulative effect of the rule changes would be more uncontested play - the opposite of what the AFL intended. The AFL's own data on the issue is unclear. While deliberating on the new rules, the laws of the game committee was given a 1999 study by Norton which found that stoppages had increased and total time "in play" had declined since the 1970s. This was the basis for the AFL's claim that the game had become too stop-start.
In his most recent AFL-commissioned work, completed in January and yet to be seen by the commission or the laws of the game committee, Norton found that trend had reversed substantially since 2000.
"Half the game was then the umpire had the ball and the clock was running down," Norton explained. "Now we have seen a reversal of that and it is back up to 55 per cent. That is a significant achievement."
This suggests the new rules are in response to an out-of-date trend.
Exactly why the coaches weren't consulted about the new rules is unclear. Two years ago, the laws of the game committee canvassed the opinions of coaches about proposed changes to the rucking rules. Although they couldn't reach consensus, AFL coaches association president Neale Daniher believes they influenced the outcome. The 10-metre ruck circle, designed to reduce injury, has been widely hailed as a success.
This time, the committee made no attempt to include coaches in its discussions on flooding and other defensive tactics, even though it is coaches who employ and counter these strategies every week.
"I respect the fact that the coaches don't make the rules but I am pushing the case that the AFL coaches' association can play a devil's advocate role," Daniher said. "If Adrian is going to introduce a rule, we can show the possible downsides and how we will counter them.
"I am not sure whether any of these rules are going to have any impact on flooding. In some ways, they might make it worse. Bringing the ball back in from kick-ins may extend the flood. I am not sure that any rule, in particular, is a panacea for flooding."
So what will the rules do to football as we know it? Perhaps not much at all. Of the three new rules, only the kick-in has the potential to alter the way the game is played and there is no compulsion on players or coaches to use it. The new interpretations will create uncertainty and spark debate throughout the NAB Cup and early rounds of the season, but it is rare for new interpretations to be consistently applied throughout an entire season.
For evidence of this, consider what happened to the harsh new interpretation for holding the ball introduced at the start of last year. In last year's grand final, not one holding the ball decision was paid.
However football appears on the surface this season, rest assured a fierce battle will be raging. If this year's rule changes don't open up the game, the AFL will consider limiting the use of interchange. If this happens, the divide will only get greater.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18252061%255E36035,00.html-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DROPPED OFF MY CHAIR WHEN I READ THIS
