They must take us for fools. How else do you explain the annual bleating by coaches about the damage that would be caused by a mooted cap on interchanges.
Restrictions on rotations will make the game unrecognisable, neglect player welfare, cause more injuries, end careers – we’ve heard it all.
Let’s look beyond the hyperbole and examine the facts, shall we?
The proposal by the AFL to cap interchanges to something like 80 a game from 2014 onwards is hardly a radical step. And not even close to the “enormous risk” Hawks coach Alistair Clarkson would have us believe.
Last year the average number of interchange rotations per team per game was 131, up markedly from 2010 and 2011 levels. Yet in 2009, clubs averaged a comparatively modest 92 rotations, and in 2008 – the magic number of 80.
Just one year earlier in 2007 the players and coaches somehow managed to play out games with an average of only 57 interchanges.
That’s right – all of five years ago coaches willingly made half the changes off the bench they do now, the players survived, and the game was pretty similar to what it is now.
Well actually, it was probably slightly better to watch, with statistics showing that since 2008, the average number of field bounces in grand finals – season deciders are as good an indicator of the state of the game as any – has almost doubled along with interchange rates.
Not too many years ago, less ball-ups and stoppages led to fewer instances of 30-players-on-the-ball schoolyard scrums and fewer half-empty fields.
This meant there was less shovelling or throwing the ball off to the few remaining free players to kick short, backwards and sideways while waiting for teammates to run forward into space.
In short, we saw less of the type of football Les Murray has been commenting on for decades.
Before his complaint that rule-tinkering will make the game “unrecognisable”, did North Melbourne coach Brad Scott ever consider fans might want to watch something significantly different from what we’ve been served up recently?
Here’s some news for him anyway: the game is already fairly unrecognisable from what it was 10, 15, 20 years ago.
But then, there’s a fair chance that despite their well-publicised outcries, Scott, Mick Malthouse, Clarkson and all those other coaches know this.
They are griping loud and often, and massaging the truth on interchanges simply to avoid changing their current game plans.
You can’t blame them. Coaches have to win at all costs, and are just trying to maintain control.
That Malthouse has been leading the anti-cap chorus for years is a given: his coaching style has always utilised higher rotations than most other teams.
But that doesn’t mean we should necessarily trust anything he or other coaches say about the way the game should be played. His only loyalty is to his club, his opinion completely compromised.
And despite more protestations from Malthouse et al on the negative effect of any cap rotations on player welfare, the co-author of the newly released AFL Injury Report, Hugh Seward, says there is still no evidence to link more interchange rotations with decreased injury rates, or vice versa.
More importantly, no-one is yet to show any clear association between fatigue and soft-tissue injuries.
Not all coaches follow the anti-cap line, by the way. John Worsfold and Michael Voss have, in recent years, been strong advocates of restricting the number of interchanges to around 80 a match.
Here’s another fact. It’s the coaches, not Malthouse’s supposed enemy the AFL Rules Committee, who are the main tinkerers with our game – always have been.
Don’t doubt for a second the rules committee has the game’s best interests at their heart: their raison d’etre seems to be finding ways of keeping the game free-flowing and watchable after the combination of increases in player fitness and coaches’ tactical innovations clog it up.
Use (and subsequent abuse) of the interchange is one such innovation. Interchanges were brought in to avoid situations where teams who had injuries finished games with less than 18 men on the field, but coaches soon realised they could use rotations to spread the workload on players, enabling their teams to run further for longer, and even drop players behind the ball.
In 1992 Kevin Sheedy changed the game forever when he stationed Dean Wallis 15 metres in the hole in front of Tony Lockett and Dons fullback David Flood all day, to hold the Saints behemoth goalless.
We saw more game fiddling in the early nineties too. Malthouse’s tactic of having Eagles players who were kicking in wait as long possible to find a free teammate became so infuriating the AFL was forced to introduce a time-limit on kick-ins.
While the number of law changes in recent years has been infuriating, and the rules and umpiring committees are obvious scapegoats. Remember it’s the interchange abuse by coaches and their panels which has led to the ultra-congested footy of recent years, and created the subsequent need for intervention.
So let’s all keep in mind where most coaches are really coming from, and take their Orwellian statements with plenty of salt.
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