KB says the AFL Commission knows "stuff all"

[QuietB]

AFL are idiots. If they want to improve attendances and ratings then how about they start with this;

1/ start the season with a full round. WTF is a splt round in R1? No one cares. You will not get traction.
2/ start the season with a real game. If Freo are playing, put them against West Coast. No one cares about pies v Freo - they have no history, and then we get swans v GWS - the only reason anyone cared about that was because GWS somehow won No one cared until that actually happened.
3/ play the games on the weekend at least. Sure we cannot have traditional Saturday games, but what is Thursday night? Sunday twilight is atrocious, Sunday night is an abortion. And they waste a blockbuster on it 4/ the talent is too thin. 18 clubs with 50 odd on a list is too much. Maybe it will even out over time, but Melbourn and similar clubs have been reamed by expansion.

Other than that there is nothing wrong with the game. If KB really wants us to go back to 3 goal to 7 rolling mauls in a foot of mud at the Whitten oval or equally crappy 23 goal to 7 annihilation (happened in the same weekend in the 80's) someone call him on SEN and give him the number to name a game. There were s**t games then, and there are s**t games now. The only difference is that they were not all telecast back then, and the s**t ones never were.

 

[clogged]

2/ start the season with a real game. If Freo are playing, put them against West Coast. No one cares about pies v Freo - they have no history, and then we get swans v GWS - the only reason anyone cared about that was because GWS somehow won No one cared until that actually happened.

Disagree with this. The problem with the AFL in recent years is they have rested on reinforcing old traditions that have limited appeal. Did anyone care about Richmond vs Carlton opening the season outside the fans of that club?

The season opener should be the grand final replay IMO.

 

[QuietB]

Disagree with this. The problem with the AFL in recent years is they have rested on reinforcing old traditions that have limited appeal. Did anyone care about Richmond vs Carlton opening the season outside the fans of that club?

The season opener should be the grand final replay IMO.

Grand final replay is wasted IMO. GF winner doesn't care, GF loser cannot make up for their loss no matter what happens.

Carlton v Richmond is a good opening game. Kind of like the ceremonial tee shot at the Masters.

 

[clogged]

Carlton v Richmond is a good opening game. Kind of like the ceremonial tee shot at the Masters.

Ugh, no way. Not to anyone who respects good football. It has been a flop for over a decade.

The AFL has missed an opportunity to grow the game as a national product by favouring old VFL rivalries. Now that non-Vic clubs are on the ascendancy again, we get the usual bleating from the VFL diehards in Bartlett.

 

[Kwality]

The 'brain dead morons' (to use the parlance of a poster above) are those pining for things to be how they were 5, 10, 20 years ago…

Things change…inexorably and continuously, almost everything evolves, and the only thing as certain as change are old fossils like KB who piss and moan and cling on for dear life because they have nothing else.

Don't like it? Find another way to spend your time, but ffs, piss off with your stupid rules and futile attempts to recapture your nostalgic wet dreams.

Some rule changes must remain, hands in the back, chopping the arms but not everything new always succeeds - yep some yearn for yesteryear & it aint going to happen, nor should it.
One problem is IF a Rules Committee doesnt change things it will be seen as redundant & given the flick - the AFL created a monster BUT, the interchange was introduced for good reason & it has grown legs of its own & needs to be reviewed.
Whining about KB ... who is listening?

I played a bit of Union at school as well as Aussie Rules (not AFL) & that is the way the game is going.

 

[Ron The Bear]

The AFL has missed an opportunity to grow the game as a national product by favouring old VFL rivalries.

How many people outside WA do you think were aware that Freo used to have an annual Anzac Day game?

 

[clogged]

How many people outside WA do you think were aware that Freo used to have an annual Anzac Day game?

Is this the 'annual' Anzac Day game which has never been annually on Anzac Day?

 

[Ron The Bear]

Is this the 'annual' Anzac Day game which has never been annually on Anzac Day?

2008-11

 

[fabulousphil]

When Kevin Bartlett played football, the dropping the ball rule was changed specifically because of the way he played.

Its ironic, i am just not sure how.

 

[clogged]

2008-11

Yes, basically when Anzac Day fell on a weekend. Not sure that's annual.

 

[Sunfire]

It might be because I didn't grow up watching the game but I personally enjoy watching the scrappy, rough, low scoring, "ugly" slogs much more than the typical "pretty" aerial style games.

 

[Crankyhawk]

Yep 20 years from now we'll have rules changes for people pining for the good old days of rolling scrums. Nostalgia is a powerful drug.



Bingo. Coaches and players understand the game better than ever before, it's very naive to think that the evolution of the game has been anything other than an arms race to find the best strategies to win games. You don't like how some of the gameplans look? Tough t***ies, rotation caps won't change anything, nothing will other than a fundamental change of some of the rules, think netball style zones. Nobody wants that, so how about we stop tinkering with the rules to force the game to conform to an aesthetic standard that is long gone.

An extreme rotation cap (back to 4 subs on the bench days) might change it as players will not have the endurance (apart from Bliclavs) to run full speed for a whole game. Does risk both sides favouring numbers behind the ball (resembling soccer style) then going all out to score in the final quarter.

 

[Crankyhawk]

Tell the umpires to throw the ball up after 3-4 seconds of the maul and actually pay the free kicks when they are there and it would be ok.

Funny enough I remember KB saying one of the reasons for so many rule changes (particular reference to HTB for diving onto ball ) was to have less ball up/ throw ups around the ground. Must have an issue with ruckmen.

 

[Jewbacca]

If you want the game to return to what was essentially an amateurish state, professional sport is not for you. AFL has plenty of issues, but they pale in comparison with those of many other sporting codes around the world.

Whether the participants are amateur or professional is irrelevant to the rules of the pursuit in question.

 

[Sydney Bloods]

http://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/ri...f-all-about-game/story-fnelctok-1226878223109

Hmmm it is a Robbo article so make of that what you will, but it is an echo of everything most people have been saying about the game.

Funny how I don't remember umpires being praised under KB's watch.

KB is largely responsible for ******* the game and it will never fully recover the damage he did to it in his tenure on the rules committee. absolute * knuckle if he absolves himself of any responsibility for the mistakes made by the AFL.

we all saw Marc Murphy throw himself on the ground like a soccer player?
That is KB's fault!

Summary * OFF KB! you contributed to the problem!

 

[yaco55]

Really?
I can only talk of soccer and not the other two - but every World Cup since 94 (because I didnt see any before that) has seen at least one or two significant changes by FIFA to the rules of the game, and UEFA and national bodies are regularly making changes as well.

Half right. Soccer has made few changes in the last thirty years. You'll find that the NRL makes more changes to the rules than the AFL.

 

[yaco55]

Some miss the point that tactics like zones, forward pressure etc, are new inventions. They are actually old inventions that are more tactically sophisticated. I've been watching footy since the 70's, and back then you would get the ball into the forward line and they you would set a wall across the midfield. Teams would win the ball in defence and often blaze the kick to the opposition ruckman set up across the centre. There were elements of forward pressure in the great Carlton teams of the lat 70's and early 80's. Carlton had a mosquito fleet and for parts of the game their forward pressure wouldn't allow the opposition clean entry from their defensive fifty. There wasn't the tactical sophistication or players having elite fitness in this period but the tactics aren't much different from today.

 

[Woodson]

The coaches didn't bring in the Hands in the back rule, The Chopping the arms rule, The bring the ball back in play before the flag is waived rule, The deliberate out of bounds rule for kicking to touch, the allowing to throw the ball rule, the allowing to dispose of it incorrectly, the rule to not reward the tackler, the bump rule where accidents are penalized.

The coaches did none of this. The AFL did it and none of it was required. We were all happy with the sport, we went in our droves to watch it, we watched on tv in our millions.
No need to change a thing.
So why did they? No one asked for there to be changes.

Gotta respect Jobe Watson for wanting to stage a protest in R1 a few years ago by having a sit down.. (didn't happen due to non-support by other teams… (read: too many scared of the AFL)…. bottom line >>> Players NEED to have a say in the rule changes… that's been one hell of a stumbling block that has been totally forgotten. No wonder it's a game that isn't the same…. umpires are forever under the pump to get in position and make decisions = double guessing = getting it wrong. Suddenly they're letting it go… hooray but tackles/ incorrect disposal not rewarded.. and the ones that are… ended up deciding a game on the weekend.

 

[nineteen eighty]

Funny how I don't remember umpires being praised under KB's watch.

KB is largely responsible for ******* the game and it will never fully recover the damage he did to it in his tenure on the rules committee. absolute **** knuckle if he absolves himself of any responsibility for the mistakes made by the AFL.

we all saw Marc Murphy throw himself on the ground like a soccer player?
That is KB's fault!

Summary **** OFF KB! you contributed to the problem!

It's KB's fault that Murphy threw himself to the ground as if he was shot. Really? I've read it all now. Early contender for post of the year. At least post of the month.

 

[Sydney Bloods]

It's KB's fault that Murphy threw himself to the ground as if he was shot. Really? I've read it all now. Early contender for post of the year. At least post of the month.

KB was part of the rules committee that changed the interpretation on what illegal contact was (thus awarding soft frees and "technical" free's) murphy having played for years under soft free rules that KB over saw implementation of, was use to being rewarded for playing for free's as a result.

that was the whole reason we then had to then bring in a diving rule. (which is never enforced) By passing rules that lead to diving in the first place. it's only in the last 2-3 years they've stopped paying non free's (and no doubt only because people we're screaming about and it was being show cased on footy programs), of course by now players like murphy are used to it and "showman ship" it is now part of their "game" and will take time to weed it out fully.

It's the whole reason why you shouldn't * with the rules, half the rules that were passed were to address issues resulting from other rule changes.

The man's a complete halfwit and lowering the interchanges to 80 isn't going to remove the maul or return things to yesteryear it will just create some other unanticipated problem, which will lead to more changes to fix that and on and on and on.

it's KB types that feel a need to "fix" the game that * it the most.

 

[Whit3y]

Yes...he's like a Tony Shaw with a brain.

do you remember the time he ran into a tree? no one with a brain runs into a tree

 

[I am Jack]

Poor KB, he just loves football in an era of business.
KB, the game was sold down the drain years ago bud, let it go.

 

[Demonic Ascent]

Some miss the point that tactics like zones, forward pressure etc, are new inventions. They are actually old inventions that are more tactically sophisticated. I've been watching footy since the 70's, and back then you would get the ball into the forward line and they you would set a wall across the midfield. Teams would win the ball in defence and often blaze the kick to the opposition ruckman set up across the centre. There were elements of forward pressure in the great Carlton teams of the lat 70's and early 80's. Carlton had a mosquito fleet and for parts of the game their forward pressure wouldn't allow the opposition clean entry from their defensive fifty. There wasn't the tactical sophistication or players having elite fitness in this period but the tactics aren't much different from today.

Yeah I agree, playing the loose man in defense is another one, it's just been taken to the nth degree.

 

[Pack Specialist]

KB is just an old man yelling at clouds.

 

[Kwality]

When Kevin Bartlett played football, the dropping the ball rule was changed specifically because of the way he played.

Its ironic, i am just not sure how.

Barry Cable before your time Fab?