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There’s a new craze sweeping the nation – or more accurately, an old craze revived – and its name is attacking footy. After years of sitting through Paul Roos and Ross Lyon-engineered snoozefests, attacking, high-scoring football is back! Well, I hope.
Maybe I’m being a little bit premature – after all, we’re only ten games into the season – but the signs so far have been very strong that coaches and teams across the league are once again starting to embrace high-scoring football.
Last season across the entire year we had just eight games where both teams hit the triple figure mark (this being so rare, by the way, is why that ‘first to 100′ rule the commentators prattle on about makes no sense). In Round 1 this season we’ve already had two.
Last year, on average, the eighteen teams scored a combined 1483 points per round. That takes a very slight hit from having one game cancelled during the season but it’s negligible. In Round 1 of 2016, the competition put together 1748 points – an improvement of a little over 44 goals for the week.
Maybe it was just an outlier, a red herring that will give us all a bit of hope before we return to low-scoring grinds in a few weeks time. No doubt there will be a few of those this season either way, but there’s some good reason to believe that attack really is back.
One thing that is helping the revival of high-scoring footy is the AFL’s new interpretation for the deliberate out of bounds rule. You will see footy fans with fairly divisive opinions of it – I’m pretty sure Tigers fans are not too keen on it after last night – but in my view it has proven a brilliant innovation.
For far too long teams have been able to take easy kicks along the boundary line going nowhere with the aim of dribbling the ball out of bounds and setting up a stoppage situation further up the ground. This allows teams to reset their structure and flood players to where they think the ball is going to go. In short, it slows the game down.
These disposals that wind up out of bounds have always been deliberate choices by the player, but haven’t been classified as such by umpires before this year. Generally speaking in the past if the player disposing of the ball has had anything resembling pressure on his disposal, then the umpires have been willing to extend the benefit of the doubt.
That has come to an end this season and umpires are now asking players to show a desire to keep the ball in play – you need to send it towards a teammate, and you can’t jog it over the line either, even if there is an opposition player nearby.
The result is that players have been forced to try and keep the game moving, or give away a free kick to the opposition. And in this modern day game of hard running, endurance, and getting numbers to the contest, that has led to more situations where teams have a chance to break past the opposition’s structure and set up a scoring opportunity.
While that new rule has no doubt contributed to the increase in scoring, I also think that in a wider sense, AFL coaches are beginning to embrace the fact attacking footy is what wins you games.
The Hawks after all have built a triple-premiership era on offence. That’s not to say their defence has been poor by any means, but it’s their versatile, multi-faceted forward line that has delivered the scores needed for three consecutive premiership cups.
Last year the highly-restrictive Fremantle managed to finish on top of the ladder but couldn’t get things done in the heat of finals. Meanwhile, the two highest scoring teams in the league; Hawthorn and West Coast contested the grand final. Adelaide and North Melbourne, the third and fifth highest scoring teams in the league, won three finals between them.
Although many will tell you that the most important thing in the game is winning the ball, it’s seeming more and more that what you do with the ball once you’ve got a hold of it is just as if not more important.
It’s no use winning a clearance if you just boot it straight into the welcoming arms of the oppositions’s spare defender.
Instead it seems that the game is increasingly becoming focused around three areas in particular: speed, ball-use, and finishing ability. And unlike contested ball – which any blue-collar team can find enough big bodies to do well in – these traits are in short supply.
The player with speed or the player who can use the ball well – or ideally, the player who can do both – is the player best placed to upset the opposition’s defensive structure and set up a scoring opportunity. After that it’s just a matter of converting the score, which sounds so simple, but basic skill errors in front of goal still cost teams games week after week.
It’s not hard to understand why defence used to reign supreme because It’s much easier to defend than it is to attack. If you want to attack you have to correctly execute all the relevant skills, while if you want to defend all you have to do is stop another bloke from doing that.
Ordinary players can become high-quality defenders but ordinary players don’t become high-quality attackers, it’s as simple as that. Ross Lyon’s St Kilda and Fremantle sides have been built on this theory in many ways, and in the age of defensive footy it came close to delivering flags for both sides.
Now defence-minded teams are getting cut up by the speed, superior ball movement and finishing ability of those sides that have embraced high-scoring footy and have the talent to pull it off. You need go no further than the Western Bulldogs’ demolition of Fremantle last week to see the proof of this.
So what does it all mean? At this stage, it looks like it means more watchable footy, and it suggests that those teams with the ability to put up high scores will be the ones contending for the flag this year.
Hawthorn and West Coast are given, but also Adelaide, the Bulldogs, North Melbourne, Sydney and Port Adelaide could be in the mix based on their scoring power. Geelong too if they keep up the improvement they showed in Round 1.
In the mean time if your team has more than a few players who can’t use the ball well, is slow, or doesn’t have a lot of options in the forward line, they probably aren’t a contender. This is a big worry for Fremantle, and also for Richmond.
We saw in last night’s thriller that the Tigers’ side is loaded with players who can’t be relied upon to get the ball where it needs to go – ask a Richmond fan this morning what they think of Taylor Hunt and you will get a crash course in this problem.
The Tigers also lack a really reliable forward option outside of Jack Riewoldt, especially at this time while Brett Deledio and Shane Edwards are sitting on the sidelines. Jayden Short’s three goals on debut were impressive, but they really need to find some more dangerous forward options if they’re going to compete with the best.
Although Collingwood have similar problems with a number of poor ball-users in their side and a forward mix not known for its consistency, we saw last night that the ability to put a few quick goals together is what will win matches for teams this year.
Offensive footy versus defensive footy will get a great test next weekend when the Tigers host the Crows at Etihad Stadium on Saturday afternoon. Will it be old-fashioned defence or new-fangled offence that wins the day?
Only time will tell, but based on everything we’ve seen so far this year, I’ll be tipping the latter.