BigFooty is 20 Years Old - How has footy changed in those two decades?

As an entertainment product overall the game has gotten worse. While skills and endurance have improved, so many other aspects of the game have gotten worse. Commentary is 2/10 at the moment. But probably the main aspect is that coaches have analyzed the fun out of the game. Basically all 36 players on the ground do zone defense now because they have the aerobic capacity to pull it off. Not enough free flowing footy. Its beehive soccer like you see primary school students do at recess. We should just about do what soccer does is make it 3 interchanges per match and thats it. The congested footy is ugly to watch and aside from the Eagles i barely watch any other game.
 

The_Eagles

Norm Smith Medallist
Jun 30, 2005
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2000 - the guernseys were baggy and much more glossy / shiny material.

The grounds were still patchy with mud and dirt areas until around 2003

White boots start becoming more popular 2005 as well peak metrosexual faux hawk hairstyles

Different coloured umpires eventually settling on fluro green around 2007, last white umpires maybe 2003

2009 - Players score girls through Facebook

Tight guernseys are popularised by Collingwood in 2010

LED advertising around ovals 2015

2016 - topknot hairstyles are cool for one season and players score girls through Instagram

2019 more AFL players with bigfooty accounts as kids than ever
 
Jul 12, 2008
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BigFooty has been around for 20 seasons of footy.

How do you think footy has changed, for the better or worse, over those 20 seasons?

right now? it's over officiated garbage now, full of pompous moron middle management in charge of feeding s**t to a stupid public, and a self-important leader to top it all off.

the footy is shitter too ;)
 
Apr 28, 2008
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The broadcaster/media coverage is more sickly nowadays (e.g. the Birds of Tokyo ad, oh god), but you could say the same for a lot of things nowadays. C7 have steadily demeaned the product from 2012 on.

As someone who was a NSW teen during the 2002-06 TV rights deal, I remember we never got the delayed telecast of WIN Friday night footy until midnight-ish.

Newspapers were worth reading to keep up with the footy until about a decade ago.

The draft saw a gradual rise in prominence between 2001-08, but seems to have faded since.

Suffocating the opposition wasn't much of a thing until Neil Craig, Ross Lyon, etc. Also some congesting, flooding, keeps-off and handball-heavy sides popped up during the 00s.

Fans generally seemed more into it then than they do now (overexposure, corporate product, sense of inequality, other distractions)

New stats categories, and generally more of a focus on stat sheets when reviewing games
 
Apr 12, 2010
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As an entertainment product overall the game has gotten worse. While skills and endurance have improved, so many other aspects of the game have gotten worse. Commentary is 2/10 at the moment. But probably the main aspect is that coaches have analyzed the fun out of the game. Basically all 36 players on the ground do zone defense now because they have the aerobic capacity to pull it off. Not enough free flowing footy. Its beehive soccer like you see primary school students do at recess. We should just about do what soccer does is make it 3 interchanges per match and thats it. The congested footy is ugly to watch and aside from the Eagles i barely watch any other game.

I think coaching and professionalism ruin most sports. But increasing player skill counter-intuitively does too.

The 1954 soccer world cup had an average of over 5 goals a game, most of them now (particularly near the end) are dour defensive affairs.

An american mate of mine swears that college football is better to watch than NFL. The NFL skills are so good that they can be relied upon for coaches to dominate the game with strategy and tactics. At the college level, whether or not the players perform to their best has a bigger impact. So when they do perform well, it really shines through.

That's kind of how I see footy say in the 90s and 00s. Champions had a bigger impact - now we have systems and structures to stifle them. These systems only work well now because the skills of the players are more predictable.
 
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