Playing the man and not the ball is not football.

Recently, Justin Longmuir,  the coach of the Fremantle Dockers in the Australian Football League (AFL), called for the umpires to provide more protection to his full forward who had been severely manhandled by the opposing full back in a game against Richmond. As some of my Blog readers live overseas and are unfamilar  with Australian Rules football, a few words of explanation are required.

Australian Rules football is a very fast, physical game played over two hours between two sides of 18 players. The grounds are oval shaped, approximately 170 metres long and 140 metres wide. Some grounds ae bigger, some grounds smaller. 

It is a team game but it also a man on man game because each player has a direct opponent.                    Full Back/Full Forward, Centre Half Back/Centre Half Forward and so on. Up until the 1970s teams only had one reserve players to replace anyone who was injured. In 1978 two reserves became available to replace injured players. Injured players, once replaced,  could not return to the game.                           

In the 1990s, the AFL introduced a four man interchange bench. Coaches could now take injured players off and have them temporarily replaced by an interchange player. The patched up injured player could be sent back into the game. As usual coaches abused the new system to their advantage. They began rotating uninjured players on the interchange bench so that they could get fresh legs on the field.  

This radically changed the nature of AFL football.  What was already a fast game became a whole lot faster because refreshed players could run in packs up and down the field all day. As a result, positional man on man contests were replaced by large packs of players around the ball. It also led to a lot more scragging and manhandling. 

In AFL football you cannot manhandle a player who does not have the ball. You can grab and tackle a player in possession of the ball. You can put your arms out to shepherd a player from the ball or from a teammate who is going for the ball. You can also deliver a hip and shoulder bump to an opponent in a contest for the ball. However, if you grab or tackle a player who is not in possession of the ball it is free kick to that player. Or it should be. There used to be one central umpire. Now there are four. They should be constantly looking for any player who is manhandling another player and awarding free kicks against that player wherever it occurs on the field. Coaches would soon change their message.

Justin Longmuir’s call for some protection for his forwards highlights the sad fact that our beloved Aussie Rules football now encourages playing the man instead of the ball. Players hold, grasp and grapple with each other before bouncedowns and boundary throw-ins. Sometimes, as in the case with Docker full forward,  Jye Amiss, players are thrown to the ground even when the ball is more than a kick away.

It was not always like this. I started going to WANFL matches with my Dad in Perth in 1947. There were plenty of really tough footballers playing in those days. But the never scragged their opponents. Why not? Because the umpire would immediately award a free kick for holding the man without the ball. There was plenty of hip and shoulder bumping and fierce tackling, but no scragging. 

Champion ruckmen of those days, like Merv McIntosh, Ray Perry, Jack Clarke, Brian "Blue" Foley and the young Graham Farmer never locked arms as they ran in to contest boundary throwins in the 1950s. Their eyes were on the ball and they used their hips and shoulders to gain position. These days, the opposing ruckmen run in more closely entwined than Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They are invariably locked together with outstretched arms over or under each other's shoulders.           

I earlier times, footballers were encouraged to play the ball and not the man. Our coaches told us that umpires would favour payers who made the ball their object. Not anymore. In the mid-1960s the game changed. Taggers became key weapons in curbing the opposition’s attacking ball getters and goal kickers. Taggers became claspers and graspers. They were  often penalised but soon  became very skilful in holding their opponents without being penalised.

In the early 2000s the introduction  of the interchange bench made everyone a midfield player. Four players on the bench could be interchanged repeatedly with players on the field. Instead of holding their specified positions, all players could now run up and down the field to assist teammates  moving the ball forward or defending opposition forward thrusts. It sometimes makes for very fast moving football as players race towards their goal, moving the ball forwards with lightning fast hand passes and accurate kicks to teammates. Sometimes, it means you have twenty or thirty players milling around in rugby like scrums and 'all in' rolling, wrestling matches. These days, we often see all 36 onfield players inside the fifty metre arc. Play is so congested and rugby like that  scragging is common. Umpires often just call  “Play on” to keep the ball moving.

These days coaches clearly instruct their players to play the man instead of the ball. The field umpires,  the four of them, often just let it happen. How often do we see players wrap their arms around their opponents, throw them to the ground and then clasp the incoming ball as the field umpire indicates, “Fair mark”. What happened to holding the man without the ball? Or putting your knee in his face?

In his response to Longmuir’s request that the laws of the game be upheld, Adam Yze, the Richmond coach, typified what all AFL coaches now say, "Our defenders try to limit the amount of access their forwards get at the ball. So, if they are manhandling then that’s the game.”  No, it’s not!

Manhandling never was part of our game. The laws of football forbid it.                                                    

Time for the umpires to lift their game and give us back our game.

  

WHAT IT IS, IS FOOTBALL!

 

WHAT IT IS, IS FOOTBALL!

Every so often on the Letters page of my local morning newspaper, some followers  of other sports, generally lovers of rugby or soccer, pen letters poking fun at our great Australian game of football, otherwise known as Aussie Rules or Footy. Sometimes pronounced Foody! Rhymes with Goody.

These writers appear to be upset, bemused, irate, iindignant, amused, perplexed or may just confused that our great game of Australian Rules Football has different rules to their game. Just imagine how they would react if the knew that Autralain Rules Football started out as Victorian Rule, because the game was born on Melbourne  half way through the 19th Century. Not only that Auystraliuan Rules football is not governed by rules but by laws. The way in which the great game s played and officiated is all set out in The Laws of Football.

The people writing disparaging letters about our game's Laws/Rules all complain that in Aussie Rules football you get a point for missing the goals. It’s called a Behind. They complain that if the ball goes through the goals, but is touched by a player on either side, or hits the goal post on the way through, then it is not a goal but a behind. Instead of six points the team only scores one point. They say that no matter how it goes through the goal posts it should be a goal.

They complain that if the  ball  hits the posts and bounces back  in to play it should be “Play on”. In the Aussie game if the ball hits the post, the   umpire stops the game, because if the ball hits the goal post it means a behind has been scored or If the ball hits the point post it is deemed to out of bounds. 

What these critics fail to understand is that Australian Rules Football is not Rugby and it is not Soccer. It is different game with different rules. And we love it.

I do not mind rugby and soccer lovers attacking our game because it shows that they are frightened of it, probably because  because it is fast, virous and more spectacular in every way. As Margaret Thatcher once said, “When they start calling me names I know that I have won the argument.” 

I have never seen any letters to the Editor from Aussie Rules fans pointing out absurdities in Soccer or Rugby. However, just for the sake of prolonging the argument I am taking a leaf out of their grumpy book to point out some anomalies in their games.

First off, the name Soccer. The round ball game is called soccer in Australia, Canada and the USA and probably in some other places, too. However, in 2005,  the Australia  Soccer Federation,   in what it thought was a great one fingered salute to the Australian Football League (AFL), changed its name to the Football Federation Australia. Then in 2020, it changed its name to Football Australia.   Fair enough. But that  organisation which seems to loathe its game being called Soccer has a national men’s team which it calls…wait for it…The Socceroos.  Maybe  it’s  time for another name  change…one way or the other. The Footeroos? The Federoos?

In Australian rules the players take postions all over the field. It is a team game but each player has direct opponent. In rugby, the two teams start in the opposite halves of the ground. Their aim is to get the ball up to the other end and score a Try, by touching the ball over the end line and by scoring a goal by kicking the ball  through the goal posts.

Seems like a good plan. However, while the rugby  team can run forward with the ball, they can only pass it backwards. What? Why? No Aussie Rules fan has ever written to a newspaper saying that this is a foolish rule. The fact is, we do not care  at all about the Rules of Rugby . But it does seem a very strange rule. Of course in Gridiron, the American high tech version of Rugby, the Quarterbacks can throw the ball as far forward as they like. Usually, with dead eyed accuracy to another player who is well forward of the ball.  You cannot do that in rugby and you definitely cannot do it in soccer.

If you score a Try you  get a free kick at goal. You not only have to kick it through the goal posts but over a cross bar which it a couple of meters above the ground. Why? What happened if the  ball goes through the posts but under the crossbar?  Well, it is no score at all. Why?

Soccer has few strange rules, too. Probably the strangest is that you cannot use your hands unless you  are the goal keeper. Seems unnatural to me. You can use your head but not your hands. In these days when concussion and its after effects are coming under increasing scrutiny, the use of the head may one day be banned. That’s if the soccer administrators use their heads.

Even stranger though, is that  if a player causes the ball to go over the side line, on purpose or accidentally, it must be returned in to the play by  a player from  the opposite team. Well, that  is not strange but how it is returned to  play is mind boggling. Just  how does this player return the ball? He throws it! He uses his hands and he throws it.  I am not  making this up. It is the rule in soccer, a game where you are not allowed to handle the ball. Why don’t they kick it  in? Or head it in?

Like rugby,  the two soccer teams occupy either half of the ground at the start of play. Their aim is to get the ball into their goal at the other end of the ground. Unlike rugby, soccer players can pass  the ball forward which is quite sensible as, otherwise, it would never get anywhere near their goal.

However, in Soccer,  the Offside Rule says that no player can be ahead of the ball. In simple terms the offside rule says, “an attacking player, when in the opposition half, must have at least two opposition players, including the goalkeeper, between him/her  and the opposition goal when a pass is being played to him/her.” For those who do not know, “The opposition half” is the half of the ground in front of  the goal net that the attacking players are trying to reach.

Even soccer lover have trouble with this rule. In fact the Offside Rule once stipulated that three opposition players must be between the attacking player and the goal. Hockey had the same rule which was amended in 1972 from  3 players to 2 from the halfway line. In 1987, hockey amended this rule to only apply within the 25 yard area. Then in 1996 they experimented with a No Offside rule. This gave more power to the attacking side, speeding  up the game and, more importantly, led to more goals being scored and making for much more exciting and dynamic game. In 1998 Hockey canned the  offside rule altogether. Hockey lovers say  this improved their game.

 So far, Soccer has been happy to stay with the two man offside rule. That is probably why soccer crowds are known for singing and chanting to keep themselves awake and amused during low scoring games. And rioting, of course. At many grounds soccer barrackers are segregated in separate areas of the ground.

Goals are still hard to score in Soccer and draws are quite common. However, the administrators have made it very easy to score goals in soccer. If the ball crosses the goal line and goes into  the net it is a goal. It does not matter if somebody touches it or it hits the posts at the side or on top of the goal. If the ball is in in the net then it is a goal. If it hits the top of the goal and bounces inside the goal line and then bounces out again …it is still a goal. In fact, even if an opposing player kicks, heads or otherwise causes the ball into the net, it is a goal.  They call it an Own Goal.

Indeed, goals are so rare in soccer, that when a player scores a goal he goes into a well rehearsed highly  choreographed routine which often involves him ripping off his shirt. Of course if a player unfortunately scores an Own Goal for the opposing side he does not dance for joy and rip his shirt off. Quite the opposite.

I do not write these lines to belittle rugby or soccer. They are both wonderful games. In fact, some of my best friends played rugby and/or soccer. Nothing wrong with that! I write merely to point out that Australian Rules fans have refrained from writing letters poking fun at soccer and rugby basically because we could not care less.  We love our Australian footy game and we love the  rules, er, pardon me, Laws that make it unique.

As somebody once said, “It’s more than a game!”