Rules committee must listen to the fans

Collingwood’s Darren Jolly wants the AFL to consult players, coaches and clubs more before changing the rules but where is his concern for the needs of those who know the most about watching and enjoying AFL football – the supporters?

Jolly argues the rules committee should be made up of more recently retired or current footballers because they are the only ones who understand the physical demands of the game.

But do footballers necessarily know how best to manage those demands?

Though players might know what’s best for players, and coaches are masters at knowing what is required to successfully run coaches’ game plans, are they and the AFL the only groups we should entrust to look after the game?

What about allowing more input from the group who are as vital as the players to the health and well-being of AFL football – the supporters?

Supporters dutifully spend their hard-earned on memberships, turn up to or watch matches on TV and online.

For their troubles they are forced to helplessly witness the column kilometres of spin, gigabytes of garbage, hours and hours of over-wrought airtime opinion spew forth from the AFL, coaches, players, commentators and journalists, all pushing the game in one direction or another – usually away from the fans.

Sure, football followers can answer AFL surveys, or whinge away in online forums and letters to editors, but what actual influence do they have on the introduction of any rule changes, umpiring interpretations or technological innovations?

The great cap debate of 2013 we are currently enduring has seen coaches, and now players, twisting facts and changing history to support their positions on how they want the game to be played.

Darren Jolly and Mick Malthouse are not doctors, yet spout with conviction that capping interchange rotations will lead to greater risk of injury and shorten careers, despite no medical evidence to back their claims.

Players and coaches claim to know how the game will look with a cap of 80 per game; but they can’t know – they are just guessing and fear-mongering.

Jolly presents a simplistically black and white vision of uncapped versus capped football: teams that can rotate as many times as they want will play at a higher intensity for longer, while players in teams with capped rotation will be so tired they will just chip the ball around and flood the back line.

Why should fans listen to him? Do these coaches and players even know – or care – what it is like to watch AFL football from the other side of the fence?

And what good is ‘intensity’ to fans if, along with players’ undoubtedly fabulous skill and courage, it regularly occurs in huge rugby-like scrums of congestion?

Many fans will tell you AFL is now often unwatchable. Attendance figures from the last three AFL seasons could be a reflection of this.

In 2010, 16 teams played a total of 186 games for the year, with a total of 7,138,334 punters going along to watch.

A year later less people overall went along to see 17 teams play 196 games, and in 2012, total attendance was down by over 350,000, despite the addition of GWS and another 11 games.

Even with the natural increase in Australia’s population over that time and the addition of extra teams and games, significantly fewer people are now attending AFL matches.

With A-League rising in popularity and NRL crowds up, could fans be voting with their feet and switching to codes that they see are more attractive, or are they simply not bothering to turn up and sit through ugly football?

Here’s an idea: the game needs to be attractive to watch for people to go and watch it.

Supporters want to see players’ skills, courage and athleticism on show.

Good football gives crowds high marks, players busting through or landing great tackles, wonderful evasive skills, one-on-one contests – and often.

Fans don’t want to see kicking backwards, throwing, rolling mauls of thirty-plus players, loads of low-scoring games.

A few tight ten-goals-a-side matches are okay, but people prefer to see lots of goals kicked. It’s what differentiates Australian Rules football from the round-ball game.

Everyone can appreciate good defensive skills too, but watching four defenders swamp Buddy Franklin every time he goes for a mark isn’t much fun.

Jolly talks of the game as the players’ living; well, fans are the reason he and all other players, the coaches, conditioning staff, advertisers, Andrew Demetriou and his staff can make a decent one out of football.

The maths is straightforward. Keep presenting unattractive football and attendance figures will drop. This will bring decreased membership sales, less money for TV rights – and less for the players, coaches and the rest.

The Pies ruckman’s argument that someone who has never played at the highest level or hasn’t been there for a decade or more shouldn’t have a say on how football develops is laughable too.

So old-codger Ivan Lendl shouldn’t be coaching Andy Murray, non-Olympian Gennadi Touretski gave nothing to Ian Thorpe, and commentator Phil Liggett would have nothing useful to say on the future of cycling?

Instead of narrowing the make-up of the rules committee, why not increase its size and broaden it to include an extra three members, perhaps voted in by fans, who understand what the modern game is like to watch, not just coach, umpire or play?

New laws of the game committee chairman Gillon McLachlan’s suggested virtues of the game charter which would include supporter input is just about the best idea to come from the AFL since the days when Kevin Bartlett still had hair.