RunningBounce
Premiership Player
- Jun 12, 2013
- 4,484
- 10,142
- AFL Club
- Richmond
Honestly think the scoring in AFLW would go up if they had 18-a-side. The number of times play grinds to a halt because there's no target in front of the ball shits me.
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Honestly think the scoring in AFLW would go up if they had 18-a-side. The number of times play grinds to a halt because there's no target in front of the ball shits me.
All that would do is have 4 more players around the ball. The coaches would not suddenly leave another few players in the forward 50.
Stupid OP. Why not just make a rule nobody can tackle? Scores will be 500 - 470 each game. Or first to touch the ball gets a shot on goal? 1000-980 each game. Would that help?
Nothing is broke about the game. It goes in ebbs and flows. We didn’t blow Geelong and Footscray off the park coz of the stand the mark rule, or 50’s or any other ******ed rule the AFL brought in. We did it through pure footy skill.
As it has always been and always will be.
The best team will kick more goals than the rest. The worst team wont. No rule changes will ever make a difference to that
Would love to see another basketball inspired rule be trialled - Illegal defence rule
Make it a free kick to be guarding space at the point the player is standing guarding space.
Big penalty to be a loose man in defence, hard to be third man intercept player if they have to pay more attention to a player.
exception being from a behind, a forward zone can be set up
be interesting to see how the coaches would pull it apart for advantage
The people never thought there was a problem with the game, it was the AFL who did. The AFL told the media to start writing about the look of the game and bingo, the Sheep started talking about the look of the game.
Before that never ever did crowds drop off, interest was as high as ever.
Not one rule change made in the last 25 years was needed or asked for by the footballing public.
The AFL know the public are sheep that Don’t actually care about the sport, any group of supporters that cared about their sport would never of allowed this amount of rule changes to it.
All to late now, AFL is a new sport. Rule changes are not evolution they are simply changing the sport.
The rules committee looking for rules to change .... then the Hocking/Gil era.
Go back to the formation of the rules committee, start there, dont simply keep fiddling, fiddle fiddle.
All that would do is have 4 more players around the ball. The coaches would not suddenly leave another few players in the forward 50.
Interchange needs to be limited, forcing pockets to be used for resting players, not the bench. Hey, fancy that ...
You haven't noticed midfielders resting forward more?It hasn't happened so far. Interchanges are now around 30% lower than they were a few years ago and it hasn't created more positional play.
You haven't noticed midfielders resting forward more?
You haven't noticed midfielders resting forward more?
Not really to be honest. I know guys like Kennedy was resting forward quite a bit before the interchange cap.
Seriously think we need to do something about the coaches
Positions are no longer a feature of the game. Are you suggesting limiting players ability to run out of the forward line?
Spot on. SA has been playing with modified rules for out of bounds rules. Do it ..
Nothing much changed between 1920 and 1980 or so for a reason, the sport did not change much. It was basically semi-professional during that period and with that comes lower fitness, skill and pretty crappy coaching tactics. There was no need to change as a result.
Since the game became fully professional though it has changed a lot quicker. The players are way way fitter than they were 30 or 40 years ago, they are on average a lot more skillful because of the proper coaching and the coaches themselves are much more sophisticated in terms of tactics used. We have seen more tactical innovation in the last 20 years than we saw in the previous 100 years and with that it creates problems in trying to make sure the rules keep up with what is happening.
I must admit I began thinking of this again because of the most recent episode of AFL Daily on the AFL website where they talked about how low scoring the game has become, a trend that has been happening for the last 20 years in fact and does not seem to be slowing down as teams become more professional and coaches become better at taking away what the opposition need to score. The AFL have introduced rules that have helped slow the decline but that is all it has done, slowed the decline as the rule changes have been too small to have any meaningful difference.
I am reminded of the NBA actually, when a number of decades ago they noticed the trend of scoring was decreasing so they made one big rule change, introducing shot clock rule stating a team had 24 seconds to possess the ball before they had to go for a shot. Now I am not saying the AFL introduce this as it would clearly be terrible for AFL but it was a huge rule change that I am sure upset a lot of purists at the time but ultimately was the right call for the league as it basically fixed the scoring issue forever.
We need a rule change like that in the AFL, something big, something that will fix the scoring issue once and for all and I think that change would be decreasing the current 18 a side to either 16 or even 15 a side, changing the game so instead of 36 players on the field you have 32 players or even 30.
I think this works as right now the problem is not just congestion but also the fact that teams have enough players to set up zones, zones that make getting the ball past them very difficult. Players are more well drilled and fitter than ever so they can maintain these zones the entire match if they want, they don't drop off in the final quarters.
Lowering the amount of players on the field by 2 or 3 per team changes things a lot as it makes a zone so much harder to implement as teams have to cover the same space since the grounds are not getting smaller but they have to do it with fewer players, meaning there are going to be bigger gaps in teams zones, gaps that attacking teams can exploit, and sure coaches will try and rework their defensive structures but there is only so much they can do. There will be more room to move, and when a team is kicking forward they will look up and see fewer players in the forward 50, giving their forwards more room to move and the opposition defenders a more difficult time as they have to be more accountable to their own man since they can't rely on a teammate covering for them.
Also I am not the only one who thinks this as Chris Scott has said in a press conference that Geelong do 16 a side practices and the ball movement and scoring is noticably better with fewer players on the field. He also mentioned this
Scott’s radical plan to fix footy
GEELONG coach Chris Scott believes a reduction in the number of players on the field to 16-per-side would deliver a more attractive brand.www.perthnow.com.au
I strongly think that in the 2022 VFL season they should lower it to 15 a side on the field and experiment with the idea for an entire year in the lower level, see how it goes and possibly look to implement the idea at an AFL level in 2023, assuming it works in the VFL.
So what do you think, would you be willing to consider 15 or 16 a side to improve the game?
2020 scratch matches were like this and made an impression on coaches apparently.
however I’m a big criticiser of the AFL meaning rule changes with no system or review. They really should do that fit]rst