Second umpire arrived in 1976.
Also, LOL at the bit below stating “EVERY” rule change. Bullshit.
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Here’s my thoughts.
(1) Increase the minimum distance of a kick to to 20 metres and ensure the umps are strict enough on the interpretation. How many times during a game do we see dinky little 7 or 8 metre kicks and the umps pay the mark. The minimum length was increased to 15 metres but the umps don’t enforce it.
(2) No more kicking backwards. By mandating forward (not lateral) kicks will make sure the the play goes forward and players will run towards goal at every opportunity, trying to take a mark and SCORE.
(3) we need to have less congestion that what’s killing the spectacle. As much as I hate to say it if the above 2 don’t work then permanent zones need to be put in, making sure forwards stay in the forward line at all times not just when the ball is bounced.
Scoring, long kicking and marking is what makes the spectacle not scrimmages and congestion around the ball.
Causation correlation… The game is umpired very differently now to then. The useful stat would be either side of the 2nd umpire in 76 - what effect did that have.
Assuming the rules are applied the same way, with everything being equal, more umpires should result in more free kicks as more infringements can be spotted. (Or, put it another way, more umpires shouldn’t result in less free kicks as that would mean they are not paying a free for something they currently are).
However, more umpires may result in a change in some player behaviors which generates less free kicks. If there is an umpire close, you’re less likely to pull a players shirt etc. Imagine how Stephen Silvagni would have played with an umpire stationed 10m away at all times!
They can fix it by ceasing to exist. Fark them.
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OK.
Over 1975/6/7, free kicks went 78.4 - 77.1 - 84.
Score went 92.6 - 95.3 - 97.7 over the same time.
Interestingly, over the introduction of the 3rd central ump, free kicks and scoring both went down, free kicks 52.7 - 43.2 - 38.7 & scoring 102.5 - 92.7 - 92.5
And avg scores have struggled to get much above 90 ever since.
So… let’s go back to 2 field umps?
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This helps flooding. They don’t need to cover shorter kicks so can get more players back.
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Yeah well you can’t include adjustments as rule changes. Der!!!
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Wouldn’t shock me if it’s true.
“Interpretations”.
For when you want to have the option of paying the rule as it’s written, just not all the time.
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Rule changes are needed, but the changes need to go back.
Go back to if you don’t kick or handball the ball away during a tackle, then it is a free kick. None of this attempted to kick it or handball it crap. No more both hands travelling in the same direction handpasses, it’s called a throw. The only time you can touch an opponent after they take a mark is if your are part of the marking contest. If you touch your opponent after the whistle is blown to award the mark, 50m penalty. Obviously not applied if you are tangled up on the ground with them.
Pay the first free. If a player dives on the ball then their opponent lays across their back to claim holding the ball, pay the in the back, stop rewarding the player playing the man. Get rid of the ruckman’s circle and ■■■■ off the ball up if the bounce doesn’t go straight up. The whole idea behind the bounce in the first place is to introduce a random restart to each piece of play after a goal.
Crack down on grappling with your opponent when contesting marks. If you see it pay it, none of this crowd affirmation we see all the time, especially at WC home games.
Keep a record of every umpire’s performance relative to every team. See which teams are always benefitting from their decisions and which ones incur the most penalties, then avoid having those umpires umpiring those teams. Also, make umpires full time. It’s not like they don’t earn a good wage anyway.
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This was trialled in preseason maybe 10 or 15 years ago as I recall. Don’t think it has as much impact as people expected it to but it would be week with trying again with curb my to rotation restrictions.
Leave it alone would be a good start.
Umpiring which applies the rules instead of “interpreting” the rules.
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Sign more major sponsors.
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The only way it will ever resemble anything like the 90s games in the ROCO spank bank is zones. AFL wouldn’t have the guts to do it because of the fan backlash.
People have to accept this is the game we now have.
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“Remember when one on one contests were a thing?!”
“Remember when full forwards kicked 100 goals a year!?”
“Zones!?! This isn’t netball mate!!!”
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100%
Watching 70s/80s footy vs watching even 90s footy, the approach of defenders is completely different. They used to go for the footy. At some point, they stopped.
The rules haven’t even really been changed.
Umpires just decided to ignore the rules.
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Continue the corruption but this time make it benefit us with a premiership.
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I feel a fair bit of Deja Vu about this thread.
It’s almost as if there’s about 6 or 7 of them that have been made over the past few years with all the same posts in them or something … 
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I am gonna convince my mate Berlusconi to come over. I know what would work, but I think I’ll get some other girl to do the required work. AC Milan have the same colours, I think he would oblige.
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There are two rule changes that were intended to speed the game up and lead to higher scores but in fact have had exactly the opposite effect.
The first is the deliberate out of bounds rule. Watch a game from before it was introduced, and what you will see quite often is a tussle deep in defence which is ended quite quickly when a defender kicks or knocks the ball towards the boundary line and it rolls out. There’s a throw-in and the game goes on.
The idea behind the rule was that someone would knock the ball into the open and either an attacker would swoop on it and score a goal or a defender would pick it up and launch an attack. But it doesn’t happen. Nobody knocks it into open territory because there is too much danger that the opposition will gain possession.
What happens now? The defender can’t knock the ball to the boundary, or even boot it 50 metres up-field close to the boundary so that it bounces out, so what does he do? He handballs to a teammate one metre away and surrounded by 3 opponents who grab him and wrap him up and there’s a struggle and eventually another 1-metre handball and another struggle. Neither team takes a chance because it’s too dangerous.
The other change was to allow play to go on after a player is tackled until the ball has completely stopped moving. Before this change, the umpire would blow the whistle for a ball-up as soon as a player with the ball was tackled in a way that held the ball to him. Instead of a huge pack developing into an ugly rugby-style rolling maul that we see time after time each week now, there would be a quick ball-up and play would continue.
Every other football code in the world has a clear and simple rule about the ball going out of bounds. Only in the AFL is the umpire or referee required to read the minds of the players and decide whether or not it was intended for the ball to go out of bounds. The rule used to be, at least in practice, that if the ball went out on the full, intentionally or not, it was a free to the opposition. If it was not out on the full, there was no free kick. So we got players kicking or knocking the ball 20, 30, 40 metres or more upfield or downfield and the play kept moving. They changed the rule and that doesn’t happen any more. Players under pressure keep the ball in close, and the pack around them gets bigger and bigger and the game gets uglier and scoring slows.
It’s ironic, I guess, that the Fools Committee introduces change after change designed to promote higher scoring and instead produces lower scoring, larger and uglier packs, and more and more decisions that infuriate fans.
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