Footy's Revolution by Elliot Cartledge

Author:Elliot Cartledge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Hardie Grant Publishing
Published: 2018-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

‘I think the AFL would concede that they can’t be as satisfied with the look of the game now compared to twenty years ago,’ said Rohan Connolly. ‘But there are more than two hundred games a year, so there’ll be decent ones, but plenty of dross as well. You become a bit of a pariah for saying it, because of the romance of the Bulldogs and Richmond flags, but if you look back at premierships over the last thirty years, they are two of the less-equipped teams. That pressure, pressure, pressure thing isn’t particularly good to watch. But good on them – it worked.’

There is little doubt that the aesthetics of the sport at AFL level has suffered since the advent of full-time professional players and the corresponding growth of coaching advisers and football departments. Put simply, due to the elite endurance of their players, coaches now have the ability to direct their entire side behind the ball if so desired, strangling movement and creating a series of rolling mauls and constant stoppages. The introduction of a third interchange player in 1994, and the addition of a fourth just four seasons later, drove a nail into the coffin of ‘pure’ football. Athletes with the capacity to sprint to contests up and down the field until exhausted and then go to the bench became the norm. Interchange rotations exploded as a result, hitting averages of 130 in 2012 and 2013, up from 40 a decade earlier. By 2018, contested possessions had never been higher and scoring rates were the lowest in half a century.

‘The defences have taken over,’ said Matthew Lloyd, now a commentator on the Macquarie Radio network. ‘Look at the first final [2017] between Richmond and Geelong … what was it, four goals to two at half-time?2 In finals I don’t mind it so much because so much is riding on it, but if it’s during the home and away season, and you’ve got six hours of radio [to fill] … you think, thank God there’s only one more quarter to go. Then again, you also say, “I could be digging a hole somewhere.”

‘I’m so thankful I got to play in the era I did and play a traditional role, be involved in some big shoot-outs – Carey down one end and myself down the other. The 1990s was the era I enjoyed the most. There are still aspects of the game I enjoy, the way they run and they still hit hard, but the Jeremy Howe moments aren’t what they used to be … they used to be all the time.’

‘This is one of those issues that requires nuance in a media sense, and the media no longer has nuance,’ said Connolly. ‘It’s hard to have an educated, informed debate about it. I think there are some entrenched problems with how the game is played that will be difficult to resolve without radical surgery. It’s the level of congestion and the lack of scoring. As a traditionalist, it pains me to say that.

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