Deliberate Rushed Behind - again.

[Wallaby]

Ok. I've officially decided I don't like this rule AT ALL. Well, I never did, but the final nail was hammered home on Monday.

There was an incident in the Rich-Mel match. Not talking about the Hogan goal where the free was paid against Astbury - that was absolutely clear.

In the 3rd quarter, a ball went over the back in the goalsquare. Astbury was tracking it back - 7-8 years ago, he would have just swung a boot at it and put it through for a rushed behind. But he's not allowed to now. So he fumbled, slowed down, and tried to corral the ball. Eventually it squirted free, Hogan swung HIS boot and it went through for a goal.

Aussie Rules has always been a game with very few restrictions. No off-side, no positional restrictions - do what you want. Every option is open to every player. There were no special rules for goalkeepers or full-backs. Rules did not change depending on where you were on the ground. Here, we had a situation where the ball was in dispute - no one had possession - but the legal options available to the one team were different to the options for the other.

That just feels wrong.

 

[Quivorir]

Is that the one where your defenders put in no effort to stop Hogan actually kicking the ball off the ground and basically gave him a free goal?

 

[BF Tiger]

Is that the one where your defenders put in no effort to stop Hogan actually kicking the ball off the ground and basically gave him a free goal?

Yes it was. But why was Astbury that apprehensive? Because of being pinged earlier.

Rest assured, every supporter from every team will have a problem with this rule at some point.

The handing of a goal to the opposition side is just too great a penalty. A ball up at the top of the square would be a better solution.

 

[Quivorir]

The rule is s**t, but that is no excuse for no player to pounce on that lose ball and stop Hogan having a free kick off the ground.

 

[Back2Back2Back]

I honestly hate every deliberate rule the game has right now. Because the interpretation is so unique to every incident, as soon as the ball looks like it is going out, half the team around the area stops chasing, turns to face the ump and throws their hands out to the sides pleading for a free kick. Great work, AFL. You've created an entire league of Matthew Lloyds. What a great image for the game. Even in soccer, the sport of umpire manipulation and penalty staging in some corners of the world, they know what is going to happen if the ball goes out.

 

[BF Tiger]

The rule is s**t, but that is no excuse for no player to pounce on that lose ball and stop Hogan having a free kick off the ground.

I think the thought was to let the ball go through for a behind untouched, and to then get the kick in. Instead the ball zigged when they hoped it would zag.

Don't worry, you'll be complaining about it soon enough.

 

[Quivorir]

I think the thought was to let the ball go through for a behind untouched, and to then get the kick in. Instead the ball zigged when they hoped it would zag.

Don't worry, you'll be complaining about it soon enough.

Oh we've been on the wrong end of the stick countless times. I said the rule is s**t. But it seems the crux of the matter here is that a goal was scored. The rule wasn't the cause of that.

 

[BF Tiger]

Oh we've been on the wrong end of the stick countless times. I said the rule is s**t. But it seems the crux of the matter here is that a goal was scored. The rule wasn't the cause of that.

The rule is what created uncertainty in Astbury's mind. Do you really think if that rule was not in place he still would've approached that contest in that manner? Highly unlikely.

 

[Wallaby]

Oh we've been on the wrong end of the stick countless times. I said the rule is s**t. But it seems the crux of the matter here is that a goal was scored. The rule wasn't the cause of that.

The rule was EXACTLY the cause of the goal being scored. If the rule wasn't there, a Richmond player would have just run it through. Instead, they had to wait, hope it went through on its own, then try and grab it when it stopped and bounced funny. Then they would have had to reverse direction, and somehow work the ball back through the crowd. All the forward had to do was a hack kick - an option which wasn't allowed to the defender.

Basically, we have one rule for the defender, and one rule for the attacker. I can't think of anywhere else that happens in the game.

 

[Quivorir]

If the free kick was paid to hogan against Astbury for the hold/over the shoulder in the first place it wouldn't have happened. Grimes then had plenty of time to go for the ball but decided to leave it then got easily pushed off the ball by Garlett. Its not the rules fault they left it alone, you can still grab the ball, you just can't tap it over the line like you used to be able to. Grab the ball, and get tackled over the line, you were never going to get pinged for HTB. It was dumb decisions by your own players that lead to the goal, not the rule.

 

[LordLucifer]

I honestly hate every deliberate rule the game has right now.

Seconded !!

I had a telephone convo today in which I expressed my disgust at the 'deliberate out of bounds' & 'deliberate rushing a behind' rules that were not necessary initially and then now are near impossible for the umpires to get right.

If a player, normally its a defender, "hits the boundary" like they did in yesteryear, who really cares ?? There will be a ball-in which should be a 50/50 duel to see which team wins possession, I really don't get what the problem is.

Further to that, with the recent addition of the very soft 'hands in the back' rule on top of the 'deliberate' rule, who would want to play Aussie Rules as a defender ?? All of the rules are stacked in favour of the forwards because these new administrations want to see more goals kicked. That's all great but it doesn't make the game a better spectacle when umpires have to second-guess what a player was thinking and then adjudicate on it.

In the GWS V Dogs match on the weekend, Tomlinson defensively punched the ball over the boundary line from a packed marking situation, it was pretty obvious that it was intentional but went in-penalised. Moments later Stringer kicked it off the side of his boot from the centre circle at right angles to where he wanted it to go yet he was penalised, go figure that one out ??

Get rid of this rule, it is a blight on the game and does not improve the spectacle at all.

The other rule that infuriates me is the rushed behind thing, the penalty is just too harsh for a split-second decision a player makes under pressure.

However, I have a solution to this one but read everything before you fire back a smart-ass rebuttal.

The reason for the rushed behind thing was due to a final a few years back where someone (Stewie Dew ??) kept taking it over the line. Now, the importance of the kick-in wasn't really focussed on until Shaw coached the Pies, he worked out that you gain possession and can set-up from defence quite easily.

Fast-forward to today and players can resume play within seconds in an attempt to get a jump on their opponents. Worst still, most kick-ins now aren't actual kick-ins, the player kicks the little one to himself and then plays on to gain another 10-15m and clear the 50m arc.

I don't have a problem at all if a player wants to rush a behind, they can do it all day and keep contributing to the scoreboard if they like. However, there has to be two small tweaks here to make them rethink it too.

First of all, just like the old days, the kick-in cannot take place until after the goal umpire had waved his flags and secondly, the kicking in player cannot play on, he must actually sink the slipper into the thing.

The beauty of this scenario is that the team that rushed the behind is then faced with all of the opposition players manning up and making it way harder for them to get through their zone. By making them fully kick-in, the coaches will then be forced to come up with some new and innovative strategies to get forward from a kick-in.

So, the team that rushed the behind is penalised by being under even more pressure than before !!

Get rid of both 'deliberate' rules and the game will be better for everyone, especially the umpires.

 

[Back2Back2Back]

I like it. The play-on thing from the behind kick in has always been a thing as far as I can remember so I don't really care about that, but the key difference is that they used to have to wait until the flags were waved and put away before continuing. That was scrapped by the AFL to encourage a free flowing faster paced game of football - which has in turn brought on other such behaviours like high interchange turnovers because everyone gets less of a break on the field. Funny how these problems have come about after the AFL started mucking with the rules, hey?