News AFL to trial new zone rule in second-tier competition next season (Full rule changes inside)

Milkshaker

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Nov 6, 2014
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Boomers are more likely to want a return to stay at home forwards.

Silly comment. To many sides in the comp for this to work now. In the VFL days this worked, now the talent is too diluted for the big key forward system.

Hence, we see sides build forward lines to compliment their list, which is good for the game. Problem is how can a club draft for the future when the rules change from season to season? It is impossible and not fair on the people who put their lives into list planning etc.
 

Roby

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So Mic McGuane and Buddy goal of the year will be a thing of the past.







These plays will no longer be part of Grand Finals in future years:












 

Roby

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The game is in deep trouble!

All my friends follow NBA on Facebook and couldn't care about AFL. The only people keeping the AFL afloat are the supporters who have long family history in supporting the game.
The AFL know they're not attracting new fans to the game and need to promote high scoring to compete with the NBA.

An overseas friend said to me the other day
"The AFL is a poor man's rugby game".

I think that sums it up for the uninitiated.

NBA is so much more interesting at the moment.
 
Dec 18, 2007
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Silly comment. To many sides in the comp for this to work now. In the VFL days this worked, now the talent is too diluted for the big key forward system.

Hence, we see sides build forward lines to compliment their list, which is good for the game. Problem is how can a club draft for the future when the rules change from season to season? It is impossible and not fair on the people who put their lives into list planning etc.

Think the context might have gone over your head because the comment was in response to someone taking a crack at boomers.

The AFL probably does need to step back from these rule changes but they seem panicked by this year which was made worst by shortened quarters and the unusual circumstances.

I think the game's real problem is its over umpired yet at the same time many clear fees are missed which suggests the game needs less rules, not more.
 

Oxirane

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Since the player that gives away the free kick has to man the mark, I think the crackdown on deliberate out of bounds will get worse, as it will pull recognised defenders out of the backline leading to more Dustin Martin like moments from forced mismatches.
 
Sep 13, 2015
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15 a side would pretty much future proof the game. Would make it impossible for even the best coaches to have a proper zone defence. There would be massive holes that would allow for much easier attacking plays.

The choice is having one big rule change and not needing to make further changes knowing it will work, or a million little rule changes in the hopes they work together to achieve the desired effect.
Teams know that what works, works. So their priority is to get those things in place first. When the AFL introduces a rule designed to 'break' those things, teams will dedicate resources to getting those things working again. I absolutely guarantee modern defensive systems will work with 15 players. They'll need to adjusted, but they'll still work.
The only way systems that work get thrown into the bin is if they get worked out. Richmond's pressure game has remained pretty constant since 2017. At the end of 2018 rules were brought in that would supposedly make that more difficult - that's not conspiracy, plenty of neutrals around here thought the new rules would affect us heavily. But using the same game we won back to back flags. However, we'd already ditched Jacob Townsend playing as a defensive forward by late 2018, and Shaun Grigg as a ruck should've been gone. They got worked out, so they were no longer viable. Now our preferred set up has two rucks and two key forwards in the team, where in 17 it was one ruck and one forward.

Whether you enjoy the football or not, the era we are in now has to be allowed to happen naturally. Most of the rules are all about taking the game back in time, but we're going to need up back where we are. The only way forward is if the current systems are beaten and replaced by superior ones. But coaches can't spend as much time as I'm sure they'd like doing this, they keep having to fix the s**t the league insists on breaking. If you want to accelerate the game out of the current era, rule changes should be geared around moving the game forward, not backwards.
The question you should be asking is 'What will help teams get through modern defences?' not 'What will break modern defences?'
 
Jun 7, 2007
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Isn't it confirmed that 20+time-on is almost certainly coming back? I think the only reason they haven't committed to it is because there's still the risk of hubs.
No they said it will increase from 16. Whether that will be 18 or 20 is yet to be announced. Dangerfield was on radio this morning pushing for 18
 
Jun 7, 2007
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Imagine how much shorter, faster and more open games would be if these changes came in:

30 seconds between a goal and the centre bounce
No ruck nominations, umpire throws it up or in as soon as they get the ball.
Any small delays in get the ball back to an umpire is a free kick
Same with small delays on the mark automatic 50.
20 second limit on any score review, if you are not sure by then goes back to umpires call

Will lead to either shorter games (players happy) or longer games due to more goals (broadcasters happy)
 

Not a mere cat

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Like the drop in music quality, our poor young generation will not get to see how great Australian Rules Football (it's real fecking name) once was. Thankfully they can watch 1980s 1990s State of Origin and sit with their mouths open wide. I watch SANFL from the 70s and 80s and hell it's far better to watch than AFL today. Rules should not have changed, and only by referendum of the public and players, not the total twats that are the AFL. Shame. WHen I played, and for over 130 years, the game was about protecting the player going first for the ball. TOday, LOL, it's wait for the opponent to get it, then tackle him and get a free as the ball slips from his grasp one feckin second after he gets it and when the tackler is ontop of him calling 'ball' and a second player jumps on the two of them, the player with the ball underneath doesn't get the in the back paid WHICH IT IS! F me.

I liked your post solely because of your comment ‘Australian Rules Football (it’s real fecking name)‘. That really p*sses me off when I hear some nimrod playing in some 3rd rate league in Qld say ‘I play AFL’. No you bloody don’t.

Hate the way the AFL have sold this, I find it particularly common in NSW and Qld.
 

mouncey2franklin

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I kind of enjoy how farcical the AFL is.

It suits Australia, that the top league of our main form of football, is a complete circus.

It really wouldn't be Australian if it were logical, stable, and dependable.

I say bring on the zones, bring on the multiball, let Gil and his family keep getting paid big $$$ to milk the game dry :thumbsu:
 

Bungeye

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Aug 19, 2017
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I kind of enjoy how farcical the AFL is.

It suits Australia, that the top league of our main form of football, is a complete circus.

It really wouldn't be Australian if it were logical, stable, and dependable.

I say bring on the zones, bring on the multiball, let Gil and his family keep getting paid big $$$ to milk the game dry :thumbsu:
The same could be said about Aussies living permanently overseas.
 

mr bagcroft

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So basically since they started this annual rule change policy you think people are losing interest?

My question was very simple, what year was the footy that bad that people stopped attending, stopped watching on TV that the AFL thought we must change the sport?

The answer is there was no such year, Fans have loved Aussie rules football forever, they watched and went every week with two possible emotions. Did we win or did we lose. Happy or sad. The sport was the sport, there was good games and bad games.

Fans never ever talked about the look of the game, they loved the sport and just wanted their team to do well.

The AFL told us to talk about the look of the game because they wanted to change the rules, as the AFL own the media they force their message through the media and hence people started to talk about something they had not spoken about for over 100 years. There was no one who really thought rule changes were needed except for the AFL. The fans by and large cared about only one thing, did we win or did we lose.

Now 20 years later we have a new sport called AFL which is a hybrid version of Australian Football and still to this day they are looking to change the rules.

The sad thing about it all is that todays supporters don't give a crap about the sport, the AFL know this and hence why they are doing what they are doing.
You will all continue to watch it and they know it.
You cant have been around circa 2005-2006 then. Plenty of discontent then with "the state of the gane" believe me.
 
Feb 21, 2006
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I'm not a fan of the 6-6-6 rule, but there's a big difference between requiring zones briefly at the resumption of play, and requiring zones for every single stoppage in the entire match.

The latter will be an absolute farce. Either almost forcing zones at all times during gameplay, or introducing so much delay at each stoppage as players move back into zones that the game is unwatchable

Its not every single stoppage, it's boundary throw-ins and kick-ins. And it's not 6-6-6 its 3 players from each team inside each 50.

I think it's all just tinkering though, what they really need to do is remove players from the field. 18 is too much in this day and age of uber professionalism/fitness.
 
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