Do the Ten Commandments of AFL prevent change?

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By Michael C, 4 Dec 2008 The Crowd is a Roar Pro

Tagged:: Dennis Lillee, ELVs, ODI

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On Tuesday, The Age published the 10 Commandments for Australian Football. They read as follows.

1 Thou shalt have four posts.
2. Thou shalt have an oval shaped, leather ball.
3. Thou shalt kick the ball
4. Thou shalt have a game that is free flowing
5. Thou shalt have players of all shapes and sizes
6. Thou shalt have a game that is attacking
7. Thou shalt not care what size the oval is
8. Thou shalt not care how long the game runs for
9. Thou shalt protect the play maker
10. Thou shalt play the game so vigorously mothers should be concerned.

We all probably have our own ideas of what should be sacred within the game.

Personally, I’ve pondered the ‘untouchables’ for some time. Looking beyond Australian Football, we know that football went from leather balls to plastic balls, and that the size and weight of golf balls, cricket bats, and so on, can vary.

But how shocking was it when Dennis Lillee introduced the aluminium bat or when Kerry Packer gave us coloured clothing and white balls for day night cricket?

Cricket is actually a good example.

By broadening the product range – through Tests, one days, and 20/20s – they have tampered with the colour of clothing, the colour of balls, the colour of stumps, line markings, field restrictions, bowling quotas, length of game, and more.

In doing that, they’ve compartmentalised their product offerings rather than completely re-invent the traditional basis of the game – Test cricket.

Rugby union has also done that, via the Rugby 7s. However, the current issue of the ELVs has forced many rugby fans to confront their ‘untouchables’ and the ‘spirit of the game’.

So what do you think about these 10 Commandments for AFL?

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The Crowd Says (34) | Page 1 of Comments

Michael C said | December 4th 2008 @ 5:12am | Report comment

I’ll just re state the line we know that football went from leather balls to plastic balls

was submitted as we know that soccer went from leather balls to plastic balls

and if edited, ought have been unambiguously changed to we know that association football went from leather balls to plastic balls,

because, living in Australia, we have 4 football codes of prominance, and one known as “Australian Football” and one that want’s to be known as “(Australian) Football”, so – - logic dictates that on an AFL tab, with references to several football codes – that the author has quite deliberately used non-ambiguous terminology as much as possible.

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Michael C said | December 4th 2008 @ 5:18am | Report comment

Anyway – my thoughts on the 10 commandments -

1 Thou shalt have four posts.

What is implied by this – - no cross bars? no compromise Gaelic/AFL goal structure? or is x-bar not covered by this edict.

Does it imply the scoring systems, 6 pt goals, 1 pt behinds and no other ‘score’ is ‘entered into’.

Personally, I like the look and feel of the goal posts – - so long as one is on too great of a lean!!! I like that the scoring rules dictate that each post forms the lesser of the 2 adjoining boundaries, i.e. the behind post joins the boundary and behind line, it adopts the lesser value. The goal post joins the behind line and goal line and adopts the lesser value of the two.

The main question regarding this then, is as to whether the rebound into play is ever introduced.

Because, in the NAB cup preseason comp, the goal posts look the same – but behave differently – - allowing 3 pt rushed behinds, 9 pt super goals and play on for a rebound back into play……………….so, the posts look like AFL goal posts, smell like AFL goal posts……..but, behave somewhat differently.

Is this commandment ONLY protecting the look and smell???

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sheek said | December 4th 2008 @ 6:13am | Report comment

5. Thou shalt have players of shapes & sizes.

In 40 years of following sport, I can’t remember one single AFL player who wouldn’t look out of place in a rugby scrum.

And stop replying to your own posts!!!!!

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Redb said | December 4th 2008 @ 7:08am | Report comment

10 is a beauty. “Thou shalt play the game so vigorously mothers should be concerned”. Tick.

Sheek,

Can’t agree with that, I think generally most AFL players would not fit into a rugby scrum. Footy is about leg speed and agility, not raw strength and grunt required in a rugby scrum. No doubt ruckmen and Centre Half Forwards would fit into a rugby scrum. What about rovers, midfilders, particularlly those who play on the wing,etc.

Could you see Michael long in a rugby scrum? – there ya go just one name off the top of my head.

Redb

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Michael C said | December 4th 2008 @ 7:46am | Report comment

5. Thou shalt have players of all shapes and sizes
Sheek, for me in 30 years of following footy, I’d suggest that none of Brady Rawlings, Robbie Flower, Ken Hinkley, Matthew ‘Spider’ Burton or Michael Roberts would at all have looked at home in a Rugby scrum.

Reality is that most AFL players of equivalent height are 10-30kgs lighter than their RU peers. This is MORE so the case in the ‘modern’ incarnation of the game.

- – - – seriously though, my main thought on this COMMANDMENT is to identify the ATTRIBUTES OF THE GAME that encourage or even facilitate different body shapes and sizes.

The main point would be ‘positional play’.
The extremes traditionally in body type have been the very tall – - ruckmen (Aaron Sandilands, Gary Dempsey, Luke Darcy); and the very short – - rovers (Paul Callery, Tony Liberatore, Brent Harvey), and everybody else in between.

For the extremes as the starting point – - we need ruck contests. SImple. And yet, the AFL seems to have deemed ‘stoppage’ to be a ‘dirty word’.

A concept if introduced of ‘last team touching the ball over the boundary line concedes a free kick’ is effectively against this commandment. As, that would remove all the ruck contests around the boundary. As it is, these are virtual free for alls anyway – and the AFL should introduce a no third man up rule – - similar to ruck duels around the ground – 2 nominated ruckmen contest as nature intended and the rest are ‘crumbers’.

If ruck contests are protected and retained – then that ensures a role for ruckmen other than just being an ‘extra midfielder’ whose main impact is being the loose man on the wing with the overlap.

The next requirement is to protect positional play – - and the reality here are the key positions to ensure that ‘gorillas’ can always get a game…..i.e. people like Dunstall, Lockett and Grenville Dietrich!!! (no, not Carl, Grenville)

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Kazama said | December 4th 2008 @ 7:55am | Report comment

Grenville was an absolute nut. The night before a game he’d go out and drink tons of grog and then show up the next day and kick ten goals. I don’t think you’d be able to get away with that these days!

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Michael C said | December 4th 2008 @ 7:59am | Report comment

Kazama -

ah, nice to see he’s remembered……

…..(feigning ignorance) ah, so, that’s (the grog) why Carlton went for Sticks Kernahan instead of Grenville…….

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Kazama said | December 4th 2008 @ 8:11am | Report comment

Yeah, I’d say a lot of footy followers in Adelaide know about Grenville, either through having seen him play or from stories told by parents and grandparents. A couple of years back they did a two-page ‘where are they now?’ interview with him in the Sunday Mail. Judging from that he hasn’t changed much.

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Pippinu said | December 4th 2008 @ 8:27am | Report comment

All ten commandments are pretty good, but two are a little bit mystifying in that they both tell us what not to worry about as an issue, rather than enunciating a philosophy:

7. Thou shalt not care what size the oval is
8. Thou shalt not care how long the game runs for

With 7, ok we know it will always be an oval (or do we?), but clearly there have to be minimum benchmarks for the size of the ground. I would think the ground has to be at least 100m long, otherwise average players are taking pot shots at goal from the centre of the ground (or even from CHB!)

With 8, well, we’re all familiar with the concept of lighning premierships – but I wonder whether this needed to be stated at all as a principle?

One would think we could come up with 2 or 3 principles that could supplant this one quite readily.

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Michael C said | December 4th 2008 @ 8:48am | Report comment

7. Thou shalt not care what size the oval is

This commandment implies the following interpretation – “Thou shalt play on an OVAL shapes arena – and NOT a rectangular pitch”.

However, it seems a little elitist and ignorant, given, that many of the games pioneers internationally are playing an adapted 9 or 12 a side version of the game on rectangular fields.

At any rate – if the determination is that some of the small cricket ovals around NZ, RSA, England etc might be deemed suitable – - the, the commandment also implies:
“Thou shalt not care how many players makes up a team on the field”

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