Ghost Dog
12-04-2022, 10:00 PM
Older article, but have not seen it here. Find the search system here slightly confusing, anyway tried and could not find it. Please delete if it was already posted.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jul/03/an-increasingly-hard-sell-just-what-has-happened-to-afl-football
No-one knows what the rules are
Umpiring is one of the toughest jobs in football. But it is a mess. I have been playing and watching football since I was five. I have no idea what the rules are anymore. They are impossible to explain to someone new to the game. They’re in a constant state of flux. Everyone is flummoxed – fans, coaches, players, even the umpires themselves.
This was highlighted to me when I took a bunch of international students to a Bulldogs, Kangaroos game thanks to North for the tickets actually. They were all confused and all 15 wanted to leave at half time
Footy has a Channel Seven problem
Like never before, football is in the hands of the host broadcasters. Over at Fox Footy, they at least put the effort in. They have callers who are skilled in their craft. They have expert commentators who seem to take their job seriously. Crucially, they endeavour to explain the mysteries of the modern game.
On Channel Seven however, they cannot decide whether each football game is the biggest sporting event since the Thriller in Manila, or a bit of a lark, a bit of a piss-take. They often go from hyperbolic to bored senseless in the space of a quarter, sometimes in the space of one sentence. Every game is boiled down to talking points. The banter, the banality and the blokiness is a major turn off.
The talent pool has thinned
A decade ago, the AFL added two clubs that barely anyone wanted. Suddenly, there were 44 footballers running around every weekend who otherwise would have been playing at the lower levels. Even before Covid-19 struck, those competitions and traditional pathways had stalled. Tasmanian football had been left to rot. Country football was struggling. A remarkable number of teenagers were now being drafted via the Victorian private school system. Kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and remote communities were increasingly being lost to the game.
There are harder questions to answer. Are young men in Australia simply not as proficient at football as they were several decades ago? Do they now have so many distractions, and are they so cossetted, that they are not as well equipped to play what is a brutal and technically demanding sport? “The generations of today have more options,” Port Adelaide list manager Jason Cripps told the Herald Sun in 2017. “They’re not kicking the footy in the backyard, they’re not kicking it at school [and] a lot of them are sitting on devices. I’m talking the age of five to 15, so by the time they get in the talent pathway program it’s too late.” It is a view echoed by Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge. “We get to a point where they’re 18 and mid-20s players and they still have a long way to go with their skills,” he said. “The skill level has dropped off over time and that’s partly because of what’s happened through the pathways.”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jul/03/an-increasingly-hard-sell-just-what-has-happened-to-afl-football
No-one knows what the rules are
Umpiring is one of the toughest jobs in football. But it is a mess. I have been playing and watching football since I was five. I have no idea what the rules are anymore. They are impossible to explain to someone new to the game. They’re in a constant state of flux. Everyone is flummoxed – fans, coaches, players, even the umpires themselves.
This was highlighted to me when I took a bunch of international students to a Bulldogs, Kangaroos game thanks to North for the tickets actually. They were all confused and all 15 wanted to leave at half time
Footy has a Channel Seven problem
Like never before, football is in the hands of the host broadcasters. Over at Fox Footy, they at least put the effort in. They have callers who are skilled in their craft. They have expert commentators who seem to take their job seriously. Crucially, they endeavour to explain the mysteries of the modern game.
On Channel Seven however, they cannot decide whether each football game is the biggest sporting event since the Thriller in Manila, or a bit of a lark, a bit of a piss-take. They often go from hyperbolic to bored senseless in the space of a quarter, sometimes in the space of one sentence. Every game is boiled down to talking points. The banter, the banality and the blokiness is a major turn off.
The talent pool has thinned
A decade ago, the AFL added two clubs that barely anyone wanted. Suddenly, there were 44 footballers running around every weekend who otherwise would have been playing at the lower levels. Even before Covid-19 struck, those competitions and traditional pathways had stalled. Tasmanian football had been left to rot. Country football was struggling. A remarkable number of teenagers were now being drafted via the Victorian private school system. Kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and remote communities were increasingly being lost to the game.
There are harder questions to answer. Are young men in Australia simply not as proficient at football as they were several decades ago? Do they now have so many distractions, and are they so cossetted, that they are not as well equipped to play what is a brutal and technically demanding sport? “The generations of today have more options,” Port Adelaide list manager Jason Cripps told the Herald Sun in 2017. “They’re not kicking the footy in the backyard, they’re not kicking it at school [and] a lot of them are sitting on devices. I’m talking the age of five to 15, so by the time they get in the talent pathway program it’s too late.” It is a view echoed by Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge. “We get to a point where they’re 18 and mid-20s players and they still have a long way to go with their skills,” he said. “The skill level has dropped off over time and that’s partly because of what’s happened through the pathways.”