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It’s the pre-season competition and nothing is at stake. So why are coaches complaining about rule changes when they don’t take the competition seriously themselves?
Over the past seven days, Hawthorn’s Alastair Clarkson, Carlton’s Mick Malthouse and other AFL coaches have publicly voiced their discontent with the Rule of the Game Committee and the rule changes which have been applied to the pre-season competition.
The biggest rule to be scrutinised by coaches is the capping of interchange rotations at 80 for the match. It has been stressed time after time that this rule is simply a trial and the AFL have declared it will not be introduced for the regular season. Yet coaches continue to whinge about disruptions.
On average there were 131 rotations per games during the regular season last year and this is the first pre-season where an interchange cap has been implemented.
The innovation out of AFL headquarters manifested under the belief that the fewer rotations will lead to fewer injuries. Over the past five years, there has been a steady increase of rotations per game as well as a steady increase in injuries across the league.
While there is a tiny element of logic between the AFL’s rational, the correlation between rotations and injuries are severely inconclusive. The AFL, however, have been mumbling about capping rotations for the past 24 months which is what led to the introduction of the substitute rule from the beginning of the 2011 AFL season.
Something AFL fans have come to learn is that the AFL is a very stubborn organisation. They will not accept failure until they see it for themselves. In theory, they are always correct. In practice though, there are rare occasions when they admit they were wrong.
The only way for them to admit they were wrong though, is to try and fail. It is better for the entire football world for the AFL to make mistakes in the preseason competition rather than the regular season.
In 2008 the AFL attempted to introduce the post-it note rule where interchanges could not be completed until the name of the player coming off; their number, the name of the player going on and their number were written on a post-it note and handed to the statistician.
The poor interchange stewards hated the sites of Simon Prestigiacomo and Daniel Giansiracusa.
The system lasted a whole of two weeks before the AFL realised how awful it was having players standing around the interchange bench waiting for approval of paperwork – in the middle of a game.
This is how the AFL works. No matter how much coaches complain to the media, they will continually try new things in an attempt to improve the game.
There are two possible outcomes for the rotation cap rule during the pre-season competition.
Coaches can ignore it and pretend it does not exist. They can coach like they would in a regular season game and quickly fill up their rotation quotas. This would then leave fatigued player on the field and supposedly more prone to injury.
The game would dramatically slow down the attractiveness of football or lead to injuries – the two things the AFL are ostensibly trying to avoid.
The second outcome is coaches can embrace the rule and build it into their game plan and allow the game to naturally be slowed down due to a lack of fresh legs on the field.
Rules apply to both teams so there is no be real advantage to either team.
The most likely scenario is that the AFL will say more research needs to be done before a rule can be introduced in a regular season.
It must also be remembered that the AFL make no judgment on coaches who do not coach their teams with the intent to win during the pre-season. At times senior coaches are not even present and hand over all coaching responsibilities to assistants.
The pre-season is all about trial and error. Coaches play players in alternate positions, test out new structures and make decisions they wouldn’t during the regular season. So far we are yet to see the AFL complain to clubs about not trying their absolute best to win.
Hawthorn made it to the grand final last year. In the opening round of the pre-season competition, they were then defeated by Gold Coast and Brisbane who were 17th and 13th last year. Hawthorn’s coaching staff did not try their absolute best to win the game yet there were no queries over tanking or match fixing.
Coaches need to realise they can’t have it both ways. The AFL will use the pre-season completion as a guinea pig for any innovative ideas but so too will the clubs.
That’s what the pre-season competition is about.
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