- May 1, 2016
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- AFL Club
- Carlton
- Moderator
- #8,526
... sorry to be a pedant, but I can be wrong without it being a fallacy. To be fallacious is for your argument to be proven incorrect on a logical level; we're not arguing something that can be anything more than opinion.
You're older than I am, so naturally you can go further back for your observation than I can. My earliest memories of footy are - funnily enough - 95. I remember that day being the moment I decided I would support Carlton, but given that I was 6-7 at the time, I can't really argue with you substantively.
What I can say is that professionalism was always going to change the sport in ways that would make it less attractive than the 80's/90's; amateur sports need to engage their audience far more than professional sports do, and AFL/VFL coaches treated defense like the plague prior to the professional change. You had Terry Wallace and Paul Roos at the beginning of the real change from old AFL to the new; the superflood which got Wallace a few wins with an ordinary Richmond side, and Roos essentially playing a team of professional taggers across an entire team. The AFL in a modern context follows trends; one team breaks clear, and others try to copy it. Teams tried to 'copy' Brisbane, resulting in WC and 2008 Hawthorn (two teams which ran 3 pronged forward lines); teams tried to copy Roos and Wallace by clamping down on possession around the ball (Craig, Lyon, Sanderson). Only really two coaches had 'original' ideas over the AFL era (Clarkson and Thompson) and neither could truly be said to be original; Thompson's was an old school truism that it's easier to spread a defense from the corridor, and Clarkson used Wallace and Roos in different ways.
Defensive footy keeps games closed, makes them unattractive; this is something coaches and the AFL has known for years. But the real problem at the moment - congestion - is due to exhausted players stopping and creating stoppages for the purposes of having a rest. What's more likely, that players will opt for running more to lay that next tackle/be tackled again, or that players will simply allow themselves to get taken to ground with nothing more to give in that moment? So, the trend becomes drafting players who can run more ahead of ball skills/footballing ability, and so this becomes a situation in which players who can run more get games ahead of footballers and the game gets bogged down due to errors from the athletes.
2010-11 was the apex of footy since 2000 because everyone was trying to replicate Geelong's high scoring game, and as a result the games themselves were open affairs. They could do this because players were given the licence to take the game on, and they had unlimited bench time to get a rest. Upon introducing the limited interchange, the average score per game has descended every year, and we have seen the rise of reactionary teams who set up to exhaust their opponents into making errors (Collingwood 2010, Sydney 2012, Hawthorn2013-15, Fremantle under Lyon, WC 2015-present, Adelaide 2013-17, and of course, Richmond 2016-present) in different ways; teams which use precise possession to limit their own errors, teams which pile players around the ball to smash their opponents into paste, teams which force their opponents to kick long into the back half before carving them up in a race to the other end of the field, etc. This football can be attractive, but most of the time it's the result of the team playing clinical footy instead of the organic stuff that we enjoy more; if it's not played well, it's a grind.
Removing the interchange cap would have its own issues (it was brought in to decrease the incident of high speed collisions resulting in concussion) but it would result in more people being draftable and capable of playing midfield than without, as these players that need the break can get them with increased availability. It would result in more footballers rather than athletes, although there will always be a spot for athletes who are capable footballers (Buddy's no slouch) and it would result in football played closer to the coach's gameplan. It'd undermine Richmond, because their game is running their opponents to mental exhaustion well before the physical kicks in, forcing errors due to panic, panic which could be relieved with a short rest on the bench.
This alone wouldn't make the game attractive, but a coaching trend away from reactionary play to aggressive footy again would create better footy. Aggressive footy needs teams that are able to run and to think in patterns to be able to make it work; teams that have limited breaks cannot do this.
