Opinion
It’s been a hell of a season in 2020 for nearly every team, and 16 teams are still a chance of playing finals footy, including Sydney as an outside chance.
The shortened quarters and interpretation clarifications for holding the ball have been massive debate questions. Here’s my opinion on if they should stay or go.
Stay: shortened quarters
Now, everyone has been arguing both for and against the shortened quarters. Well, I’m all for it. Why? Because it gives more tightly contested (24) games, and players are still playing at such a high level even though there’s been the festival of footy (twice now) and teams get only a couple of days break.
For example, even though scoring has obviously gone down, teams like St Kilda and Geelong are still averaging around 70 points per game. Tackling has lifted too, with the league average of tackles per minute and contested possessions per minute, excluding added time, tracking at 0.77 and 1.9 respectively as of Saturday morning. Last year it was 0.8 and 1.84.
Clangers are decent too, with clangers per minute this year up 0.02 from 0.7 last year to 0.72 per minute today. It isn’t the biggest change, but it’s still super impressive given the fatigue and the chopping and changing of every team.
And so far there’s also been 24 games decided by single-digit margins – six contain Carlton and two are draws. Last year up to Round 11 there were 21 single-digit margins and none were draws. If this continues for the rest of the year, the AFL should really consider keeping the 16-minute quarters.
(Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
Go: holding the ball
Even though this has been a bit of a small change, it really should revert back to its original status. This new rule has just been as pathetic as the other. My dad recently said to me that umpires have “nearly really interpreted” the holding the ball rule well, and he was right.
Ever since Alastair Clarkson went full-on Jafar to the AFL in early July it’s still been way top inconsistent. The Eagles-Blues game is a good example. The Sam Petrevski-Seton call late in the first and the 50-metre penalty arguably cost the Blues the game. There was also one paid when Carlton were on a roll that but the Eagles had no prior.
In fact Fox Footy’s Tom Morris revealed on 29 July that holding the ball frees increased from 6.7 per game at 82 per cent accuracy between Rounds 1 and 4, to 9.6 at only 80 per cent between Rounds 5 and 8. This is just shocking. And if it doesn’t change back soon, this beautiful game will be ruined.
Yes, both these topics have been a bit controversial and divisive, but while the shortened quarters have worked a gem, the holding the ball has been bad. Real bad. But we’ll wait and see what happens at the end of this season.
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