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A few years ago, the AFL banned the “coathanger” and the “driving tackle”. Similarly, the NRL banned the “stiff arm” and the “spear tackle”.
These were good decisions, as no one wants to see players become paraplegics or get badly injured, but how many other rules have been changed with very little, if any, real consideration to the outcome of the game?
I mean who would really want to be a defender in the AFL?
They changed the rule about intentionally knocking the ball through the opponent’s goal and conceding a point.
For long, while no one, including the umpires, had a clue what was legal and what wasn’t, so free-kicks were given that shouldn’t have been, and vice versa.
They changed the rule about hitting an opponent’s arms in a marking duel.
Fantastic! So you are six-feet tall, standing a guy 7’14’. What possible chance do you have?
They changed the rule about shepherding and brought in a new one saying, you had to allow an opponent, a free run at the ball.
How does that make sense?
They changed the rule, saying you are not allowed to hold your position under the ball using your arms or hands.
So, how else are you supposed to stop a large opponent backing on to you?
For a lot of last season, and this, they enforced the rule that if you went to ground with the ball you were holding it. (Regardless of whether you had two ruck men laying on top of you.)
Now, they are allowing players to just drop the ball or throw it away one-handed.
I won’t go into the tackles or this post will become “tome” size.
I have always been against rule-changes, unless they are “extremely” necessary. By “extremely”, I mean they need to be life-threatening to the players or the game.
If we were to go through the rule-changes for the past five years, I would be surprised if even five per cent were actually necessary. On top of that, a lot just seem to be thrown in without any real thought.
So, now we find ourselves in the position that we have to keep changing the rules, to try and sort out the fiasco that has been created.
But wait, there’s more!
Just so that everyone is totally confused about what the rules are,the part-time officials, called umpires, are each allowed to have their own interpretation of each rule.
It might be time that we thought about changing the AFL administration rather than the rules of our game, which has been played for over a hundred years.
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