AFL - Terrible Ideas, Too Many Ideas, No Idea…

[cul_de_sac]

I love him, but it should have been illegal when Longy was doing it

[simmo41]

…and yet we still have the “please sir, I’ve got my hand in the air. Can you please confirm it’s ok for me to be the ruckman at this stoppage?”
Stop the rot, AFL. Simply. “ If more than one player from a team attempts to go for the tap at a stoppage, the umpire will pay a free kick and 50 metre penalty to the opposition.” I think that may control the problem without the need for teacher/student type responses!!

This is one of those ones that’s applied better in local footy than it is in the AFL. Umps note who the ruck is at the start of the quarter and just assume it’s always them, unless they aren’t in sight, and only then do they ask. AFL umpires seem to have this need to add a bit of theatre to everything.

[simmo41]

Where there is uncertainty over who is the designated ruckman

This just seems to increase the grey area. Get rid of nomination our don’t.

Not really. “Uncertainty” would take the form of “bloke from the last stoppage isn’t at this one because they’ve gone to the bench/forward line”

[simmo41]

I think the ruck taking the ball not being prior is a very bad idea. There’s going to be some really dour play toward the end of close game if the ruckman can grab it and let himself get tackled.

They still have to try and get rid of it. Plus you’re also assuming they can just choose to basically replicate a contested mark willy nilly. Wasn’t an issue before the initial change, and won’t be now.

I fkn love this change on a personal level. Three times this year I had teams just straight up stop competing against me in the ruck, but I still had to tap it somewhere like an idiot.

[FromTheAshes]

These clowns are ruining the game.
Honestly. They make a rule, then Change it back 3 years later.

There absolutely no reason to change the whole hands in the back rule, it’s one of the only black or white rules that the umpire can make.
But no, the rules need to be every shade of grey so there is no right or wrong. The AFL wants every rule to be objective, so the umpires can’t be called out for making wrong decisions.

The rules are only changed every year because the AFL think they need gimmicks to sell ratings.

Strongly disagree with keeping the hands in the back rule. It is a joke and has been from the second Richo did it in that Dreamtime game.

Lot of great marks should be paid hands in the back if the rule was applied strictly. Thankfully they got better at officiating it, glad its gone.

Agree completely at the idiocy of having to remove a rule they brought in themselves.

[SplitRound]

If they’re not competing, surely you can get a disposal away, at which point the rule is irrelevant?

Edit: says someone who’s never competed in the ruck. I’ll take your word for it.

[Reboot]

I think the ruck taking the ball not being prior is a very bad idea. There’s going to be some really dour play toward the end of close game if the ruckman can grab it and let himself get tackled.

They still have to try and get rid of it. Plus you’re also assuming they can just choose to basically replicate a contested mark willy nilly. Wasn’t an issue before the initial change, and won’t be now.

I fkn love this change on a personal level. Three times this year I had teams just straight up stop competing against me in the ruck, but I still had to tap it somewhere like an idiot.

Couldn’t you just spike it, volleyball style, into the face of one of their players.

[SMJ]

There is so much about these changes I hate that I don’t when know where to start.

Handballing out from a behind? The addition of the 18m goalsquare by stealth? Playing on when a 50m penalty has been awarded and the other teams player is being taken back on his mark?

As usual, some of it sounds ok on paper but there will be unintended consequences galore.

Meanwhile, the one thing they actually could have done to reduce congestion (remove the nominated ruckman rule and just throw the thing up) they choose not to do.

The AFL rule book is insanely long by the way. It needs to be radically radically simplified. Don’t have a thousand rules for different types of contact - have one rule - if you perform any action on a player which unfairly takes them out of the contest - free kick.

I’d love to have a crack at simplying the rules like this - go right back to the fundamentals. Should this be a project for the two of us @ivan?

[jonovdp]

Strongly disagree with keeping the hands in the back rule. It is a joke and has been from the second Richo did it in that Dreamtime game.

Even without the ‘hands in the back rule’…that incident was a push in the back. Clearly hands pushed his opponent out of a marking contests.

Plus that rule was in place for a good 1/3 of the season before that incident actually happened. After the first few games, when the rules was brought in…Not once have I thought, “gee, I wish they’d get rid of the hands in the back rule”.

I like it. I like the fact that I can clearly identify when the umpire is right or wrong. If any footballer is stupid enough to use their hands in the back during a marking contest, they would be pinged. It’s their own fault.

People including myself, are going to be losing our sh*t because the umpire has called ‘play on’, when it was a clear push in the back. Late in the game, which costs us 4 points or a final. I will put money on it.

[Blummers32]

• When defenders mark or receive a free kick within nine metres of their own goal, the man on the mark will be brought in line with the top of the goalsquare.

Is this just expanding what allows you to take a set shot from directly in front?

It’s when the defender marks.
So if it’s marked on the goal line he isn’t forced to kick down one side of the ground because the man on the mark is so close to the fence.

Should enable the defender to choose which side to kick to without the opposition picking it well before the play has begun.

[Henry_s_Angry_Pills]

I’m of the opinion it’s generic rules that lead to a lot of the grey areas that then get filled with “interpretations”
Nothing wrong with many rules, as long as they’re clear and not contradictory.
It’s a complex game, when you think about it.

[SMJ]

By the way, I look forward to the spectacle in the last minute of a game where the team leading by a few points takes a mark within scoring distance but refuses to take a shot because a miss will allow the opposition to basically get the ball back to the centre unopposed

[Blummers32]

The getting rid of kicking to yourself has come out of nowhere. I guess the goal square still serves a purpose in that you can’t be called to play on until you are out of it. I’m curious to know what the protected area to the sides will be though

One suspects the talk of 18m goal squares was always a hey look over here rule designed just to distract everyone with relief when they didn’t bring it in.

The goal square will serve a greater purpose eventually.

Once they realise that all 12 players are milling around the 50 metre arc waiting for the bounce to flood the middle, they’ll enforce that one defender and one forward will need to start from the centre square.

Edit…
Just realised it’s part of these new rules…

[mrjez]

Kicking for goal after the siren

• A player who has been awarded a mark or free kick once play has ended:

  • Will now be able to kick across their body using a snap or check-side kick
  • BUT must kick the ball directly in line with the man on the mark and the goal.

Can someone explain the above? How the hell do you kick a snap for goal directly over the man on the mark? Are you allowed to take 3 steps to the left of the mark (kicking with your right foot) then take a three step run up and kick directly over the mark towards the goal?

There is no farking way this can be adjudicated accurately and fairly.

[up_up]

I’d love to have a crack at simplying the rules like this - go right back to the fundamentals. Should this be a project for the two of us @ivan?

Think you’re overcomplicating there

[is_good_is_don]

you perform any action on a player which unfairly takes them out of the contest - free kick.

This doesn’t get rid of any rules… you still need a rule to decide what ‘unfairly’ means

[SMJ]

I know what you mean, but there’s a way it can be done.

At the very least, with simplified rules, you might have a half a dozen grey interpretation areas, not 20-30.

[theDJR]

What I got from the release is that you can put your hand in someone’s back but not your forearm.

It’s an odd change: they haven’t paid it for about two years now after going full Fark Carlton initially, so I find it odd they felt the need to draw attention to it.

(I don’t have a problem with this change in isolation: as noted above, let the umps call the spirit of the game rather than 37 knee-jerked and contradictory additions.)

[SMJ]

No you don’t really, in my view.

Certainly you’d have definitions. But essentially the interpretation should be done by the umpire given the context of the game and the specific infringing action itself, not by overly long and complex rules.

Look what’s happened with the sliding rule. They could have left that up to the umpire. The rule could have been - a dangerous slide is a free kick. But by trying to take the interpretation out of it (what is dangerous) and making the arbitrary below the knees rule, you’ve had a whole raft of ridiculous free kicks, where a player simply going for the ball, in a non dangerous way, gives away a free kick.

There’s a million examples of this sort of thing but I’ll give you another one. How many times have you seen a free given for a tiny push or a tiny hold where the player being infringed upon couldn’t have impacted on the contest anyway (maybe there were too far away, etc). They have to pay those as it stands but if the person being slightly infringed upon couldn’t have impacted the contest in any way, then who cares whether another player touched his jumper etc?

[Shelton10]

The one that really gives me the absolute sheets is the one about kick-ins after a point. It has every appearance of these clowns having put up the 18 metre goal square and having been laughed at so hard that they dropped it, then casting about for something similar that they could try and sell. It’s stupid, it’s complicated, and it’s aim is to fix a problem that doesn’t actually exist. There’s nothing wrong with the kick-in rule as it is now and has been forever. So why fix it? Leave it alone!!