It's not a binary discussion with a right and a wrong Bedford. I wasn't have a crack at you. The game has changed, and many feel as you do.
I hate a lack of forward structure as much as anyone. It's a constant discussion on these boards.
Mobile Full fowards have been thing now for decades, though. There's no magic switch.
Defenders have a right to defend as well. And really apart from setting zones like netball and stopping freedom of movement around the ground - which i think really would destroy football - how do you stop players from creating 2 on ones, and rebounding?
With so many goals coming from deep in defence, the days of a man standing still 30m out from goal are gone.
We've lost Plugger one out in the goal square. In it's place we've got waves of attack with 10 or more players moving together to create a goal. In opposition we have 10 players moving with them to stop them.
How did this happen? Professionalism.
An increased professionalism has always changed tactics in sports. And those changes were always permanent.
Zone defence didn't always exist in basketball, team defense didn't always exist in Soccer. In AR it's no different.
A lot of the yearning for how it was in older periods is a yearning for a return to simpler days when there was little to no actual strategy in footy.
It was forcings back. Everyone stayed in their positions and bombed it long. The game was uncomplicated. If all teams played along with this notion that there is only one way to play that's fine. But they didn't.
Teams like the Hawks in the 80's ran at defences with handpasses. Teams like West Coast in the early 90s set up defensive structures where everything built off half back. Teams like the Swans created presses between the arcs, teams like the Saints employed floods, teams like North crushed the forwadline down to create the Pagan paddock (no fwd structure at all), teams like Essendon developed a devastating short kicking game, teams like Brisbane went man on man, teams like the Hawks went zonal...
On and on. Evolution.
Going back to the 80's style of footy, coaches worked out that unskilled disposals were an opportunity to gain possession and hurt the other side. They built team strategies to force turnovers, and make opponents to hold the ball.
It's a done thing. Having the league create an offside or zones etc will only lead to other opportunities for coaches to devlop winning formulae.