The Roar
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More rules required for AFL

Roar Rookie
20th September, 2015
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The AFL needs more rules, about the rules. (Photo: Andrew White/AFL Media)
Roar Rookie
20th September, 2015
2

It’s a long-running joke among foreigners new to Australian Rules that it has no rules. How wrong they are.

As any AFL fan knows, there are rules aplenty. Anyone who doesn’t keep a close eye on the game and the coverage will soon be left wondering what the whistle-blowing is all about.

But it’s about time that we instituted more rules – about the rules.

In the AFL there is regular teeth-gnashing and talkback radio-harassing about the rules. Some examples that come readily to mind:

The umpires’ ‘rule of the week’. (Revived recently with some over-zealous and downright comedic adjudications of the deliberate out-of-bounds rule.)

The annual rule debates. Which should stay, which should go, and which should be invented. (This year, the sub rule and the rotation numbers are fashionable.)

The different pre-season rules. (Remember the hitting the post rule change a few years back?)

The unwritten rules. (No dobbing at the tribunal even if he broke your jaw.)

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The remarkable ongoing absence of some rules. (It’s okay to punch someone in the head as long as you pretend you’re going for the ball.)

I propose one more rule, however. A rule on rules. Specifically, an annual limitation on rule changes. That being exactly… one.

And it includes the pre-season. Or, as it’s more accurately called, practice matches for the kids and the clubs who need some extra petty cash.

This way, there can be no rule-tinkering on a whim by the committee. No groundswell of Herald Sun poll respondents will be able to influence direct action before it’s been thought through. No kneejerk reaction to ill-advised rule of the week determinations by the umpires can hijack the game.

Just one chance.

Imagine how simple it would be. There’s been a change brought in for the pre-season to jazz it up? Great. No more until next year. A coaching innovation conspires to stagnate the game into an even more defensive dirge? No changes now, I’m afraid. You’ll just have to work it out as you go.

Those rule committee meetings would be fiery as the great minds tried to work out which rule was going to make it each year. Just imagine the debates!

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I’d even support the inclusion of a talkback segment to those committee meetings co-sponsored by SEN so that Jim from Emerald can have his say, with a live stream of the whole thing on the AFL website.

As long as there were rules to the discussion, of course.

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