If the AFL wanted some answers as to why its spectacle is waning, it can look no further than the case of Jack Viney.
The incident, among other things, provides an opportunity for the football public to fume about the state of the game.
While this article merely piles upon this morning’s columns of vitriol, the decision to suspend Viney for two weeks marks a fundamental shift in the game’s philosophy.
It’s come to a point where the AFL must clarify its position.
At the moment, it’s a lottery based on a series of events out of anyone’s control.
In some sort of effort to appeal to everyone, football is losing its identity and much of what made it great. Remember the ‘I’d like to see that’ AFL advertisement? Ironically, we would like to see that but we’ve moved so far from it.
You can look as far back as the inclusion of the centre circle as to when the game began to tinker in response to injury. While the centre circle is now widely accepted, it’s possible to argue it was the beginning of the slippery slope towards sanitisation. A reaction to a spate of collision injuries to ruckmen forced a change to the very playing field that has operated so successfully for over 100 years.
Overreaction to injury has brought about rule changes that are unfathomable to any other sport. From sliding as a result of a rare, but horrific injury to Swan Gary Rohan, to the ludicrous notion of ‘duty of care’ in a game that has encouraged hardness for over a century and is fundamentally unpredictable.
The most worrying aspect of the sliding rule – another adjudication that requires explanation – is the apparent trend. The first chip away from the great game we all love. In all of football’s rules, however ‘soft’ or overumpired, none has penalised the player that goes for the ball until this. It goes against the very nature of most players, and yes, in time they will adapt, but at what cost to the game?
The abhorrent Viney ruling has rubber stamped that attacking the ball is no longer a hallmark or any cause for protection.
For a professional sport to be so lost in its own rules, so unsure of what it wants to be, is farcical. All the while, football, rugby and even the NBA run in the background. Make no mistake, rival codes will benefit from this, as many claim the Viney decision to be the final straw.
While there’s no doubt the decision is raw for many, most will come crawling back after an insular protest. But there will be some that will just watch something else.
The direction of the AFL game may very well be a case of ‘careful what you wish for’. The AFL’s legal counsel, Jeff Gleeson, found Viney guilty on the account he could’ve avoided all contact and spun away.
Perhaps it will take similar instances, where instead players do just that, for the AFL to stop and realise: what have we done?
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