Actually, that's what I'll do. I'll watch the doco on the 1984 premiership again.
Booked to go Tree Top Climbing in the Dandenongs to avoid anything to do with it this year. Now sick as a dog and had to cancel that so will just sleep the day away.
now I feel depressed. r u ok?
will hopefully be better by next Wednesday. NOT missing the B&F under any circumstance as I've been to the last 20 in a row.
The game's turned ugly - and I wouldn't be Lyon
Date September 27, 2013 - 12:02AMStephen AlomesRoss Lyon's style of play puts the future of Australian football under threat.
Fremantle coach Ross Lyon. Photo: Pat Scala
After a year of sport involving pharmacology, match-fixing, gambling and bad behaviour, off and on the field, one code has come down to tomorrow. For all the wrong reasons.
For this Saturday may well be the darkest day in Australian sport. And it will occur on the field.
The threat to football traditions comes from a "win at all costs" culture, and how the game is played. Football has changed over the last 20 years, at first imperceptibly, now fundamentally.
The on-field threat comes from the seeming good, and the certainly inscrutable – the $1.5 million man, Paul Roos, and the laconic coach of Fremantle, Ross Lyon.
AdvertisementThese orchestrators, or evil geniuses, have fundamentally changed the character of the game, with a little help from Rodney, Mick, John and others. Rodney Eade introduced the flood, Roos turned it into the forward press, as did Lyon at St Kilda, and, at Collingwood, Mick Malthouse added love of the boundary line.
Gyms, rugby league-style tackling and aerobic capacity have created the new siege game perfected in all its ugliness by Fremantle. I call it Tackleball and Stoppageball, Robert Walls uses "rolling scrum", Drew Morphett "mobile wrestling", Ted Hopkins refers to Ugby (fusing rugby and ugly). In this Umpireball, the game of stoppages and throw-ins, the umpires get more touches than most players.
The Lyon game is the extreme version of the forward press: ugliness personified and "Smotherball" are the latest deformities imposed on the game. Footy is about the contested ball. It is also about kicking and marking, handballing and goaling. At its best it is hard but honourable, as in tough finals. There is nothing honourable about a culture expressed in the new Lyon language of football. No coach has ever referred as much as the Freo supremo to the game as "war", to "going into battle", to a "brutal" game.
The new game, where more than 30 players are inside the 50-metre line of one side, and where the ball ricochets from one scrambled or smothered kick or handball to another, might interest some rugby aficionados. "Manic (or maniac) pressure" is not football. That's why seasoned commentators, including Walls and David Parkin, celebrate watching Geelong play, and more recently Hawthorn.
Fremantle is appreciated for endeavour and for winning tight games. While, as with Lyon's losing St Kilda sides, some talented players, such as Nick Riewoldt and Lenny Hayes, Matthew Pavlich and Michael Walters, temporarily redeem the ugliness, the game they play is not football.
Lyon is the Douglas Jardine – the England Bodyline captain – of Australian football. He operates within the rules, but against the spirit of the game, and with that Essendon-style theme of "win at all costs".
The Lyon experiment failed at St Kilda. Why? Because if you turn the game into trench warfare you can win or lose by inches. Because the infamous "bubble", insulating players from the world around them, may have led to recurrent bad behaviour.
There is a very simple solution to save footy from the coaches.
Aside from Hawthorn kicking long beyond the press to strong-marking players on Saturday, one simple rule change will save the game from coaching destructiveness. That is each team must have a minimum of four players behind each 50-metre line.
That simple measure, controlled by the video umpire, will ensure that the maximum number of players in the press is 28. Players will take contested marks at both ends of the ground, particularly as the eight players in the other goals compete for the ball. Most footy supporters don't want a mad scramble – an Auskick match with everyone on the ball. They like close matches, but they want a football game to break out on a footy oval, not just an arm-wrestle inside 50.
The future of Australian football is under threat on Saturday. If Fremantle prevails in the "brutal battle", all coaches will be turned into boa constrictors seeking to deny their opposition "time and space". That will appeal to wrestling and rugby aficionados. But the destructive press and low scores are not what the most creative of the football codes is about.
A Lyon premiership, which will make every coach emulate his strategies and tactics, will not be good for football. As David Cooney observes, if all football becomes Lyonised, how many will turn up to watch?
As a Geelong supporter who also barracks for the future of footy, reluctantly I say, "Go Hawks!"
Oh no, a team plan based on defence, how shocking, the sky is falling.................fark me. Obviously written by an academic wanker!!
agree, thought this was an absolute load of horse ■■■■. It shat me no end when people crapped on about sydney's style in the middle of the last decade. i would much rather have the game of competing and evolving styles that we do now than still have pointing where they are going to kick it from kick ins.
Oh, well, I'm the odd man out. I agree fundamentaly with the author.
agree, thought this was an absolute load of horse ****. It shat me no end when people crapped on about sydney's style in the middle of the last decade. i would much rather have the game of competing and evolving styles that we do now than still have pointing where they are going to kick it from kick ins.Oh no, a team plan based on defence, how shocking, the sky is falling.................fark me. Obviously written by an academic wanker!!The game's turned ugly - and I wouldn't be Lyon
Date September 27, 2013 - 12:02AM
Stephen Alomes
Ross Lyon's style of play puts the future of Australian football under threat.
After a year of sport involving pharmacology, match-fixing, gambling and bad behaviour, off and on the field, one code has come down to tomorrow. For all the wrong reasons.
Fremantle coach Ross Lyon. Photo: Pat Scala
For this Saturday may well be the darkest day in Australian sport. And it will occur on the field.
The threat to football traditions comes from a "win at all costs" culture, and how the game is played. Football has changed over the last 20 years, at first imperceptibly, now fundamentally.
The on-field threat comes from the seeming good, and the certainly inscrutable – the $1.5 million man, Paul Roos, and the laconic coach of Fremantle, Ross Lyon.
Advertisement
These orchestrators, or evil geniuses, have fundamentally changed the character of the game, with a little help from Rodney, Mick, John and others. Rodney Eade introduced the flood, Roos turned it into the forward press, as did Lyon at St Kilda, and, at Collingwood, Mick Malthouse added love of the boundary line.
Gyms, rugby league-style tackling and aerobic capacity have created the new siege game perfected in all its ugliness by Fremantle. I call it Tackleball and Stoppageball, Robert Walls uses "rolling scrum", Drew Morphett "mobile wrestling", Ted Hopkins refers to Ugby (fusing rugby and ugly). In this Umpireball, the game of stoppages and throw-ins, the umpires get more touches than most players.
The Lyon game is the extreme version of the forward press: ugliness personified and "Smotherball" are the latest deformities imposed on the game. Footy is about the contested ball. It is also about kicking and marking, handballing and goaling. At its best it is hard but honourable, as in tough finals. There is nothing honourable about a culture expressed in the new Lyon language of football. No coach has ever referred as much as the Freo supremo to the game as "war", to "going into battle", to a "brutal" game.
The new game, where more than 30 players are inside the 50-metre line of one side, and where the ball ricochets from one scrambled or smothered kick or handball to another, might interest some rugby aficionados. "Manic (or maniac) pressure" is not football. That's why seasoned commentators, including Walls and David Parkin, celebrate watching Geelong play, and more recently Hawthorn.
Fremantle is appreciated for endeavour and for winning tight games. While, as with Lyon's losing St Kilda sides, some talented players, such as Nick Riewoldt and Lenny Hayes, Matthew Pavlich and Michael Walters, temporarily redeem the ugliness, the game they play is not football.
Lyon is the Douglas Jardine – the England Bodyline captain – of Australian football. He operates within the rules, but against the spirit of the game, and with that Essendon-style theme of "win at all costs".
The Lyon experiment failed at St Kilda. Why? Because if you turn the game into trench warfare you can win or lose by inches. Because the infamous "bubble", insulating players from the world around them, may have led to recurrent bad behaviour.
There is a very simple solution to save footy from the coaches.
Aside from Hawthorn kicking long beyond the press to strong-marking players on Saturday, one simple rule change will save the game from coaching destructiveness. That is each team must have a minimum of four players behind each 50-metre line.
That simple measure, controlled by the video umpire, will ensure that the maximum number of players in the press is 28. Players will take contested marks at both ends of the ground, particularly as the eight players in the other goals compete for the ball. Most footy supporters don't want a mad scramble – an Auskick match with everyone on the ball. They like close matches, but they want a football game to break out on a footy oval, not just an arm-wrestle inside 50.
The future of Australian football is under threat on Saturday. If Fremantle prevails in the "brutal battle", all coaches will be turned into boa constrictors seeking to deny their opposition "time and space". That will appeal to wrestling and rugby aficionados. But the destructive press and low scores are not what the most creative of the football codes is about.
A Lyon premiership, which will make every coach emulate his strategies and tactics, will not be good for football. As David Cooney observes, if all football becomes Lyonised, how many will turn up to watch?
As a Geelong supporter who also barracks for the future of footy, reluctantly I say, "Go Hawks!"
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-games-turned-ugly--and-i-wouldnt-be-lyon-20130926-2ugy2.html#ixzz2g3ZasBi8
Article is so bad it just about deserves its own thread.
There are issues with the way the game is played at the moment, in my opinion, foremost of which is the widening margin between ball ups and free kicks.
But that's not Fremantle's doing, or issue.
The AFL could change that overnight should they wish to.
I wasn't a fan of the way Sydney played in that year. I certainly couldn't have watched it every week, but in the GF against West Coast it was utterly compelling.
AFL has moved ever further away from that style of football since that year. For the most part I think it's pretty good now. Could be tweaked a little but it doesn't need the major surgery of a FARKING OFF-SIDE RULE YOU COMPLETE BERK!
Sorry. Emotions got the better of me towards the end there.
Actually, that's what I'll do. I'll watch the doco on the 1984 premiership again.
Have a look at the bloke in the background while Sheedy is being interviewed after the 1984 GF.
Surely it can't be the bloke who kicked the 3rd goal of the last quarter.
agree, thought this was an absolute load of horse ****. It shat me no end when people crapped on about sydney's style in the middle of the last decade. i would much rather have the game of competing and evolving styles that we do now than still have pointing where they are going to kick it from kick ins.
Oh no, a team plan based on defence, how shocking, the sky is falling.................fark me. Obviously written by an academic wanker!!The game's turned ugly - and I wouldn't be Lyon
Date September 27, 2013 - 12:02AM
Stephen Alomes
Ross Lyon's style of play puts the future of Australian football under threat.
After a year of sport involving pharmacology, match-fixing, gambling and bad behaviour, off and on the field, one code has come down to tomorrow. For all the wrong reasons.
For this Saturday may well be the darkest day in Australian sport. And it will occur on the field.
The threat to football traditions comes from a "win at all costs" culture, and how the game is played. Football has changed over the last 20 years, at first imperceptibly, now fundamentally.
The on-field threat comes from the seeming good, and the certainly inscrutable – the $1.5 million man, Paul Roos, and the laconic coach of Fremantle, Ross Lyon.
Advertisement
These orchestrators, or evil geniuses, have fundamentally changed the character of the game, with a little help from Rodney, Mick, John and others. Rodney Eade introduced the flood, Roos turned it into the forward press, as did Lyon at St Kilda, and, at Collingwood, Mick Malthouse added love of the boundary line.
Gyms, rugby league-style tackling and aerobic capacity have created the new siege game perfected in all its ugliness by Fremantle. I call it Tackleball and Stoppageball, Robert Walls uses "rolling scrum", Drew Morphett "mobile wrestling", Ted Hopkins refers to Ugby (fusing rugby and ugly). In this Umpireball, the game of stoppages and throw-ins, the umpires get more touches than most players.
The Lyon game is the extreme version of the forward press: ugliness personified and "Smotherball" are the latest deformities imposed on the game. Footy is about the contested ball. It is also about kicking and marking, handballing and goaling. At its best it is hard but honourable, as in tough finals. There is nothing honourable about a culture expressed in the new Lyon language of football. No coach has ever referred as much as the Freo supremo to the game as "war", to "going into battle", to a "brutal" game.
The new game, where more than 30 players are inside the 50-metre line of one side, and where the ball ricochets from one scrambled or smothered kick or handball to another, might interest some rugby aficionados. "Manic (or maniac) pressure" is not football. That's why seasoned commentators, including Walls and David Parkin, celebrate watching Geelong play, and more recently Hawthorn.
Fremantle is appreciated for endeavour and for winning tight games. While, as with Lyon's losing St Kilda sides, some talented players, such as Nick Riewoldt and Lenny Hayes, Matthew Pavlich and Michael Walters, temporarily redeem the ugliness, the game they play is not football.
Lyon is the Douglas Jardine – the England Bodyline captain – of Australian football. He operates within the rules, but against the spirit of the game, and with that Essendon-style theme of "win at all costs".
The Lyon experiment failed at St Kilda. Why? Because if you turn the game into trench warfare you can win or lose by inches. Because the infamous "bubble", insulating players from the world around them, may have led to recurrent bad behaviour.
There is a very simple solution to save footy from the coaches.
Aside from Hawthorn kicking long beyond the press to strong-marking players on Saturday, one simple rule change will save the game from coaching destructiveness. That is each team must have a minimum of four players behind each 50-metre line.
That simple measure, controlled by the video umpire, will ensure that the maximum number of players in the press is 28. Players will take contested marks at both ends of the ground, particularly as the eight players in the other goals compete for the ball. Most footy supporters don't want a mad scramble – an Auskick match with everyone on the ball. They like close matches, but they want a football game to break out on a footy oval, not just an arm-wrestle inside 50.
The future of Australian football is under threat on Saturday. If Fremantle prevails in the "brutal battle", all coaches will be turned into boa constrictors seeking to deny their opposition "time and space". That will appeal to wrestling and rugby aficionados. But the destructive press and low scores are not what the most creative of the football codes is about.
A Lyon premiership, which will make every coach emulate his strategies and tactics, will not be good for football. As David Cooney observes, if all football becomes Lyonised, how many will turn up to watch?
As a Geelong supporter who also barracks for the future of footy, reluctantly I say, "Go Hawks!"
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-games-turned-ugly--and-i-wouldnt-be-lyon-20130926-2ugy2.html#ixzz2g3ZasBi8
Article is so bad it just about deserves its own thread.
There are issues with the way the game is played at the moment, in my opinion, foremost of which is the widening margin between ball ups and free kicks.
But that's not Fremantle's doing, or issue.
The AFL could change that overnight should they wish to.
I wasn't a fan of the way Sydney played in that year. I certainly couldn't have watched it every week, but in the GF against West Coast it was utterly compelling.
AFL has moved ever further away from that style of football since that year. For the most part I think it's pretty good now. Could be tweaked a little but it doesn't need the major surgery of a FARKING OFF-SIDE RULE YOU COMPLETE BERK!
Sorry. Emotions got the better of me towards the end there.
Geelong supporter. Bitter much? Geez you've won how may flags in the last how many years?
If anyone thinks introducting netball style zone rules is the answer, then they are asking the wrong question.
If anyone thinks introducting netball style zone rules is the answer, then they are asking the wrong question.
contact, wing defense
If anyone thinks introducting netball style zone rules is the answer, then they are asking the wrong question.
I gave the correct answer to the wrong question once.
Oh, well, I'm the odd man out. I agree fundamentaly with the author.
Nup. You're not alone 'boot. Today's game is just a progression of the flood that Wallace introduced to beat us in 2000, and you know how we all loved that. I still remember all the abuse that was hurled at Wallace when he was going down to the ground at 3/4 time. (I may or may not have contributed to said abuse).
Having 36 blokes in one half of the ground is just crap. I would much rather see an open, free-running game than this scramble-handball-smother-scramble-tackle crap that we are getting these days.
I may a bit old fashioned, but I would much rather see more one-on-one contests than this 'just push the ball forward and hope your team-mate gets it' style.
I gave the correct answer to the wrong question once.
If anyone thinks introducting netball style zone rules is the answer, then they are asking the wrong question.
I answer "I do" to a question once, that ended up expensive.
Oh, well, I'm the odd man out. I agree fundamentaly with the author.
Nup. You're not alone 'boot. Today's game is just a progression of the flood that Wallace introduced to beat us in 2000, and you know how we all loved that. I still remember all the abuse that was hurled at Wallace when he was going down to the ground at 3/4 time. (I may or may not have contributed to said abuse).
Having 36 blokes in one half of the ground is just crap. I would much rather see an open, free-running game than this scramble-handball-smother-scramble-tackle crap that we are getting these days.
I may a bit old fashioned, but I would much rather see more one-on-one contests than this 'just push the ball forward and hope your team-mate gets it' style.
+1. I'm an old fart living in Queensland and I see enough tackle crash tackle crash in that other game.
If people actually wanted to make changes to free up play again, I'd suggest 7 interchange......but only 15 on the ground at once.
Or we could just build bigger grounds.
But then again, we could just let the offensive minded work out the defensive game plans and exploit their issues as they have for 100 years. (and somehow teams still score goals easy enough anyway, and we obviously have Freo's measure, as we had StKilda's measure when Lyon was there :) )
+1. I'm an old fart living in Queensland and I see enough tackle crash tackle crash in that other game.Nup. You're not alone 'boot. Today's game is just a progression of the flood that Wallace introduced to beat us in 2000, and you know how we all loved that. I still remember all the abuse that was hurled at Wallace when he was going down to the ground at 3/4 time. (I may or may not have contributed to said abuse).Oh, well, I'm the odd man out. I agree fundamentaly with the author.
Having 36 blokes in one half of the ground is just crap. I would much rather see an open, free-running game than this scramble-handball-smother-scramble-tackle crap that we are getting these days.
I may a bit old fashioned, but I would much rather see more one-on-one contests than this 'just push the ball forward and hope your team-mate gets it' style.
You want an open, free-running game where 16 players are confined to their respective fifties?
I just can't wait until we make one again personally.
I know I don't want 30 blokes occupying 10 sq metres of the ground playing high speed pass the parcel.
I know I don't want 30 blokes occupying 10 sq metres of the ground playing high speed pass the parcel.
I don't know if nineties football is possible anymore.
But seventies and eighties football definitely is. As I said, just pay more free kicks.
You won't get free-flowing football, you'll get the stop-start football of those years.
But it won't be what we have now.
And I don't mind what we have now.
I know I don't want 30 blokes occupying 10 sq metres of the ground playing high speed pass the parcel.
I'm not advocating it, but 'back in the day' they used to pay _stacks_ of frees (like 100 in a game). If the umps paid frees for holding the man, holding the ball, throwing, in the back, etc whenever they were there then there wouldn't be a pack to be seen. Currently they pay about 1 in 25 and wonder why supporters from both sides think they're pathetic.
_Then_ the players would have to adjust, and there'd be less frees paid. Then the players would start to push their luck, and ....it's all cyclical....At the moment players get away with almost anything, and umpires are scared to pay frees for fear of being 'wrong'. But times change.
I know I don't want 30 blokes occupying 10 sq metres of the ground playing high speed pass the parcel.
I don't know if nineties football is possible anymore.
But seventies and eighties football definitely is. As I said, just pay more free kicks.
You won't get free-flowing football, you'll get the stop-start football of those years.
But it won't be what we have now.
And I don't mind what we have now.
I also don't mind what we have now. Mostly. Except when we're losing....