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A farcical end to the regular season headlines this week’s Friday night football.
I’m grumpy. I wrote what I thought was a nice, well-rounded preview for this game and it’s all been wrecked.
But that’s not even why I’m grumpy.
This resting situation is rapidly spiralling out of control. North Melbourne, a team that has finals spots resting in the palm of their hands, have chosen to rest nine of their first-choice players for tonight’s game.
Let’s check in on last week’s Friday night forecast, before I come in off the long run.
Prediction: Geelong defeat Collingwood by 12 points.
Actual: Collingwood defeat Geelong by 48 points.
The mighty Geelong era categorically ends with the most whimperish whimper imaginable. Like champion players, champion teams rarely get to end things on their own terms, and that’s what is about to happen to the Cats.
Their decline arguably started in 2013, with 2014’s third place finish not reflecting the underlying performance of the team.
The risk identified in last week’s game was that Geelong’s two key weaknesses, clearance situations and general contested situations, were two of Collingwood’s stronger points. Well, the Pies won the clearance battle by 20 (yes, 21-41), and competed possessions by 16 (131-147). It was a smashing.
Here’s a question for you: who gets themselves into contention first of these two? I lean vertical, not horizontal.
Here’s this week’s Friday Night Forecast.
Richmond versus North Melbourne
Friday, September 4
Bouncedown: 7:50pm (WST)
Etihad Stadium, Melbourne, Victoria
Actually, no. Let’s not. I had written a preview of this game. But I’ve just deleted it. It’s soap box time. Before this piece deteriorates into a series of frothy statements of opinion, a quick word on the Laws of the Game.
In Round 23, 2013, the Dockers were third on the ladder, only two premiership points behind the second placed Geelong, and four premiership points and some percentage ahead of fourth placed Sydney.
Fremantle sent a B-team over to Melbourne to play St Kilda, in what was a calculated gamble by the brains trust that a fresher Fremantle would be in a better position to fly over to Melbourne the following week. They got smacked, and other results meant they ended up staying in that position.
It got a lot of attention, rightfully, because Fremantle effectively put up the white flag and, all things being equal (they probably would have beaten St Kilda), manipulated their position on the ladder. This led the AFL to change Rule 29 in its Integrity Rules, to read:
Rule 29 means at all times to perform honestly and to the best of one’s ability in the pursuit only of legitimate competitive objectives.
For the avoidance of doubt ‘legitimate competitive objective’ includes the development of the team or players or management of player fatigue or injuries but does not include improving a club’s draft position, improving a club’s position with respect to a potential player exchange or manipulating a club’s position on the ladder for the purpose of improving its draw within the finals series.
Fremantle copped an absolute hiding from the Melbourne media earlier this week, when it was revealed they planned on resting up to 10 players that had played against Melbourne in Round 22.
It’s not a great look, to be sure, but as The Roar colleague Cam Rose pointed out on Tuesday, the acrimony is verging on outright parochialism and jealousy. Fremantle are locked into top spot.
Port Adelaide are locked out of the final eight. This match is the epitome of a dead rubber, and resting players does not fall foul of the AFL’s Rule 29. The Western Bulldogs appear to have decided to leave a handful of their veterans at home, too, although that is more business as usual than either Fremantle or North Melbourne.
North Melbourne, by contrast, fall very much afoul of Rule 29. Their mass changes, to significantly weaken their playing 22 with an eye to the first week of finals, most certainly “manipulates the club’s position on the ladder for the purposes of improving its draw within the finals series”.
The logjam around the middle part of the ladder, and the intersection of tonight’s combatants, throw up so many different scenarios. Here’s a table, and we’ll just assume that Sydney and Hawthorn both win, and that percentage remains the same, to keep things simple.
While North Melbourne can only rise as far as seventh in this simplified scenario (which assumes they can’t make up the percentage gap in the event they finish on the same points as Richmond or the Dogs), their opponent is significantly influenced by the outcome of this game.
In the ‘North Melbourne wins’ scenarios, there is a small chance that they end up playing an elimination final against a very hot Crows at the Adelaide Oval. In the ‘Richmond wins’ scenarios, there is no chance of that happening. In fact, North Melbourne can avoid any chance of having to leave the confines of the MCG by losing this game. Sounds like manipulating their position on the ladder to me.
But that’s just the first round effect of this. What’s to say Richmond, with full knowledge that North Melbourne will be resting a host of players, decide that they have a couple of late withdrawals? Will Hawthorn, comfortable that West Coast will beat the Saints on Saturday, decide to let a couple of their veteran players with niggles sit out the return leg of a game they won by 138 points earlier in the year? The Western Bulldogs appear to have decided to leave a handful of their veterans at home too, although that is more reasonable than either Fremantle or North Melbourne.
North Melbourne’s situation is completely different to Fremantle’s mass resting of players. It falls afoul of the AFL’s integrity rules, and is a blight on the game heading into what is supposed to be the peak of the season. Where Fremantle are flirting with their own form, North Melbourne are flirting with the shape of the finals series.
And to top it off, North Melbourne appear to have had this signed off by League HQ. An AFL spokesperson said the league gave their blessing on the basis of “expected results”. What utter garbage. This is another in what is a worrying trend of ad-hoc decisions being made by the powers that be.
Adelaide hit the nail on the head in this statement, released on Thursday afternoon.
We acknowledge that all clubs are well within their rights to take advantage of the current rules, however, the question is should the rules be changed?
The AFL, quite rightly, continues to hold a firm stance on teams playing to their merits when positioned near the bottom of the ladder given the possible impact on draft selections. But the definition of integrity appears blurred when applied to teams in the upper echelon where results can potentially change team rankings and possible allocation of home finals.
So what’s the endgame here? North Melbourne will argue that Fremantle are doing it, so why can’t they? It can go one of two ways: Rule 29 is once again rewritten to outright ban clubs from mass resting players ahead of finals, or we all carry on and pretend it never happened, and act surprised when four teams do it in 2016.
Another option may be to give everyone an additional week off before the finals. The first Saturday in October doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as the traditional moniker, to be sure. But maybe giving everyone a bit of a breather is the way to go. Although aren’t we just moving the yellow line back a couple of inches?
When arbitrary borders exist in the way they do here, and with the draft, and with the salary cap, clubs will always take a mile for every inch given. And good luck to them, they are well within their rights to do so.
Perhaps the only way forward is the outright ban. Or for the AFL to actually enforce its existing policy. But that’s for another day.
What’s my Friday night forecast? Might head out for a bite to eat and a movie. What’s yours?