Chris Judd: Drawing the wrong conclusions

Chris Judd has always struck me as one of the more intelligent and thoughtful of the footballing fraternity, but as the saying goes, even the world’s greatest genius can spout a lot of brainless garbage when there are column inches to fill.

Previously I had thought my own career was the best illustration of this adage, but there is a new prime example: Judd’s article of this week headed ‘Ban the draw: Why footy needs overtime and a shootout, in which the dual Brownlow medallist states his belief that allowing AFL games to finish with scores level is unacceptable and the status quo must be replaced by a system ensuring victory for one side.

There are quite a few people who share Judd’s belief of course, and I’m sure that as baffled as I am by their insistence that draws, which have been going on for as long as sport has existed, are somehow against the spirit of the game, they are equally baffled by people like me who insist that, honestly, draws are fine. Really.

They’re fine.

It’s hard to convince someone who gnashes their teeth whenever the siren blows with the scoreboard displaying fearful symmetry that it’s all okay and nobody is being drained of their essence by letting the score be.

You could point out that football’s been thriving for over a century now and that nobody seems to have been turned off by the occasional draw. Of course some say that it’s different now – that sport is entertainment and to compete in the entertainment sector it needs to provide greater consumer satisfaction than a draw can provide.

But sport has always been entertainment, and the reason it’s such great entertainment is that it’s not like other entertainment.

The possibility of disappointment, even of boredom, is essential because sport can’t properly entertain unless the participants aren’t focused first and foremost on entertainment. What grips about sport is the contest, the battle, the desperate struggling of two sides to emerge on top. Without that, sport might as well just be a movie or a video game.

It stands apart because when we watch sport we believe there is something more than crowd-pleasing going on. That’s why the AFL is 18 teams of varying ability playing each other on a rotating schedule rather than just the same two teams trying to play as spectacularly as possible every week.

Indeed it’s why there is a scoreboard – but when you’ve got a scoreboard there’s the possibility it will end up tied. Removing that possibility does not play to the fundamental appeal of sport; it’s an attempt to make sport less sports-like – to make it neater, make it more predictable, make it more like entertainment.

(Image: Greg Ford/AFL Media)

So what of Judd’s argument that a draw results in “emptiness” for players and fans – that without the decisiveness of a win and a loss everyone is somehow robbed of a magical depth of feeling?

The short version is: what a load of rubbish. The longer version is: it’s just not true. Judd writes of the Adelaide versus Collingwood game:

Sunday’s game between Collingwood and Adelaide was one of the games of the year but left supporters and players alike with neither the high of victory or the low of defeat. After such an epic battle, it doesn’t seem fitting that there was no victor …

It’s weird to think that Judd could be a fan of football and still think this. It may be true that the feelings experienced by fans after that game weren’t exactly “the high of victory or the low of defeat”, but like almost all draws it was a tale of one team that failed to hang on to a lead and one team that rose from the ashes to save themselves from defeat.

In this particular instance this was exaggerated by the fact a 50-point lead was blown. For the blower of a big lead there is massive disappointment while for the reeler-in there is a certain sense of triumph. I guarantee you the players and fans of Adelaide and Collingwood were not short on emotion at game’s end.

As for “it doesn’t seem fitting that there was no victor”, this is the exact opposite of the case – in fact after such an epic battle it wouldn’t have seemed fitting that one team had to lose. Isn’t that what we always say, that it’s a shame there had to be a loser?

So often two teams both put on a mighty performance and one has to go away with nothing to show for their effort. On rare occasions they can’t be separated on the scoreboard, so why would we want to do away with those rare occasions when it’s so often impossible to separate them in our admiration?

As for Judd’s concern that a draw means nobody gets the ‘energy’ from a win – well, you had a chance to win, just like every team that loses did. If you didn’t quite take it, that’s sport for you – and I bet the energy from a draw is still preferable to that from a loss.

Of course Judd doesn’t just complain about draws – he also provides a possible solution. He doesn’t go for the idea of golden point, but like the progenitors of that foul NRL-blighting abomination, he has started with a bad idea and tried his hardest to make it worse.

Judd proposes two three-minute periods of extra time, and if scores are still level, a shootout. Yes! Having cast his eye over the game of soccer, Judd has decided that the AFL could benefit by adopting the worst part of it and imposing it on games that don’t need it.

But he proposes a ‘twist’ to distinguish it from soccer:

The uniqueness comes from the home team choosing where each set shot takes place from. If Adelaide were the home team for instance, they could have Eddie Betts pick a spot near the boundary line utilising his incredible skill at banana kicks; if their opponent was able to match Eddie’s effort, they could take their second set shot from 65 metres out using Tex Walker’s booming right foot to their advantage.

(Image: Lachlan Cunningham)

He has cleverly made sure that his idea isn’t the same as soccer’s shootout: it’s much worse. The home team chooses where each set shot takes place? What? What is the guiding principle here? If the home team has some kind of superior moral claim on victory, why not just say that in the event of a draw, the home team wins? Or play extra time where the home team is the only one allowed to touch the ball with their hands?

Are we trying to turn home-and-away football games into slam-dunk contests? Most sports have the good sense to keep their exhibitions and sideshows separate from their premier competitions; Judd would rather shoehorn one into the other.

Like golden point, which took the pointlessness of extra time and added predictability and unfairness into the mix, Judd’s idea is based on the premise that draws are anathema to football lovers and any length should be taken to avoid them.

But the premise is untrue: draws are fine. They’re a part of sport and they do not detract from the excitement and unpredictability of the contest – indeed they enhance it.

Obviously draws sometimes cannot be left to stand. In finals and grand finals a victor is necessary, and extra time is preferable to putting on a replay the next week (golden point and shootouts, however, are never necessary – a pox on them for all eternity).

But this is what is termed ‘a necessary evil’ – we don’t play extra time in finals because it’s fun, we do it because we have to. For the rest of the season, when we don’t have to, doing it is just stupid.

I hope and pray that nobody at the AFL reads Judd’s piece and feels a lightbulb go on, for as great a player as he was and as smart a man as he is, this is the dumbest idea floated for quite some time.

For the love of God don’t repeat the NRL’s mistake. Don’t declare war on the draw. The draw is good. The draw is noble. The draw is a fine result, and long may it keep delighting and frustrating us in equal measure. For is that not sport?