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Despite having a passionate love for our unique game, every single fan has something they don’t like.
Whether it be congestion around stoppages, umpires not rewarding Travis Cloke enough free kicks or annoying commentators, we all have something that gets under our skin.
You have some not-so-obvious pet peeves, the obvious hates, and then you have ducking into head high tackles, or rather, the ‘dropping of the knees’. This is a pet hate so obvious that makes you want to throw your remote (or whatever we hold more often during the football, most likely a mobile phone) at the television screen.
You throw irate insults at the umpire and indignantly yell out, that once again, the umpire has been sucked in, by the player’s ducking of the head.
But are the umpires really getting sucked in? Jordan Lewis told AFL 360 that it was art form, a statement we have heard on many occasions, by many players. Is it an art form? It has indeed evolved over time, as art does.
Humans have evolved art from cave depictions, to religious artworks, to propaganda, to…don’t even try to make me pin point an explanation of modern art. Please.
Daniel Kerr’s 2007 campaign consisted of 17 games and 51 free kicks, at an average of three a game. In six of his 17 games, he had four or more free kicks, including a tally of eight in one game, which beats Joel Selwood’s free kick record. While not all, surely, were rewards for being taken head high, quite a few were, as Kerr mastered the ‘shoulder-shrug’ technique.
The Selwood brothers followed suit. As did many others. Many players began putting their head over the ball (that’s fantastic) and purposefully charging into the legs, hips and stomachs of the standing opposition around the contest.
And it evolved again, some techniques become less common while others have their 15 minutes. We saw Lindsay Thomas on Friday night on a few occasions lean into the tackler, the dropping of one side of the body and the angling of the head into the opposition allowed Thomas to draw multiple free kicks, mostly in dangerous positions and resulting on shots at goal.
Similarly, Charlie Cameron against St Kilda on Saturday utilised the most recent evolution of the technique, the dropping of the knees. It’s simple. You drop your knees, you become shorter, the tackler takes you high.
Apparently it’s an art form.
Actually, it’s a disgrace.
It would be an art form if you fooled the umpires. These umpires are not being fooled, they are being told to protect the head. That includes players who drop their knees, if their head is hit, they have a duty to protect them and pay a free kick.
The only person these players need to be protected from is themselves. They are causing the damage, if something serious does derive from using the technique.
While I hate this, it’s hard to pinpoint how to counter the issue. Do we accept that it is a part of the game now, and leave it? Do we tell the umpires to stop paying free kicks if they deem the ‘victim’ has initiated the high contact? We do still have to protect the head, some way or another. Do we start handing out fines?
We have handed out fines for staging in the past, and while that is a far less common issue than ducking at stoppages, it has almost entirely stamped out that annoying little facet of the game. How much different to staging is ducking?
It leads me to another question, I’ve mentioned how much I lament seeing this in our great game. But when you get down to the finer points; I hate seeing players do this, I hate seeing the opposition do this, but when it comes to my team, I dislike it, but I don’t care nearly as much. After all we have a free kick. We have the ball. We could kick a goal here, stuff the other team and what they think about that!
And if I (and surely I am not the only one) think that way when one of the players in my colours does it, should we really judge the players that do this on the footy field (and these days there are many)? They go out on to the field to win, and do whatever it takes, what do they care if they’re annoying the opposition by ducking into tackles, if it results in possession, or six points for their side? Blaming the players doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in that regard.
There are too many questions to be asked. All I know, is that it does infuriate me, and though I don’t mind as much when my team is on the receiving end of a few, that’s not to say I don’t want it stamped out completely.
I do. Let the game flow properly, I don’t want an entertaining and intense passage of play cut short by a player milking a soft free kick. I guess that’s just a footy fan’s lament.
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