New AFL rules have fans on the edge of their seats — but for the wrong reason

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Three-and-a-bit rounds into the AFL season, a grab-bag of new rules — and the sometimes mystifying interpretation of some old ones — have created a highly technical and bureaucratic game that is leaving fans on the edge of their seats.

But this is not due to the excitement created by the new free-flowing, high-scoring game we had been promised.

It's because the sound of the umpire's whistle has become like the theme music from Jaws — the sign of an impending disaster too often created by rules that run contrary to what was, for more than a century, the very spirit of the game.

When you consider the individual elements that constitute the AFL's rule-changing frenzy in isolation, most seem justifiable.

The retaliator usually gets caught, so penalising the provocateurs for even relatively light off-the-ball bumps is well intentioned.

Everyone wanted to see less of the ugly packs created by control freak coaches whose game plans were based on creating repeat stoppages.

So clearing congestion with the 6-6-6 starting positions at centre bounces — virtual zones — has some merit.

The player who has taken a mark or earned a free kick should have space in which to dispose of the ball or attempt to play on, so keeping lurking opponents out of his "protected zone" seems like a pretty good idea.

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And why not accelerate the pace of play by making the man on the mark scuttle backwards after a 50-metre penalty like a boundary umpire on speed?

All these changes made sense on the drawing board, but when added to an already confusing mix they are an instant source of anguish.

Perhaps not in the commentary boxes, where some experts enjoy rule changes because it gives them yet more points of conjecture and even makes some feel their pontification has an influence on how the game is administered.


But there is confusion and irritation among those who surely count most — the supporters.

The "game day experience" at the AFL games I've attended so far this season has included supporters of both clubs expressing bewilderment at the sudden and unexpected imposition of penalties that are counterintuitive to the play that has just occurred.

Most controversially there is the "crackdown" on players making contact off-the-ball or with opponents at stoppages, a rule that now seems to apply equally to flagrant punches and the lightest contact.

As the parents of most junior players would tell you, stamping out the silly "show of strength" is entirely reasonable given the trickle-down effect in early-age junior competitions, where kids imitate their heroes with crude elbows and sly bumps.

But there has been a massive overcorrection, to the point where players seems as confused as the spectators about when and how often they are allowed to brush past an opponent.

It did not help the AFL sell its tough-on-contact case when, in the first week of the season, two players who punched opponents off the ball escaped penalty.

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Yet Collingwood's Mason Cox was hauled before the tribunal the next week for an obviously innocuous bump. (Thankfully the American was cleared).

This confusion was only exacerbated by the revelation players will be punished for cumulative niggling leading to the obvious and unanswered question — how many times can a defender bump an opponent before he is penalised?

As Lionel Richie might have asked, is it once, twice or three times a free kick?

We already had the "sliding rule" that, quite sensibly, prohibits players sliding into the knees of opponents even if they are chasing the ball, but which is too often being applied for innocuous contact or even when a player has gotten to the ball first and he is hit by an opponent's legs.

The 6-6-6 starting position seems to have had the desired effect — at least while the warning system is in place and players are not being penalised for sticking a toenail outside their designated areas.

Centre square bounces are cleaner and less congested. But this also means the reward for winning clean possession has been greatly exaggerated.

In time, we will know if this results in more breathtaking centre square shootouts or, as some coaches warned, more blow-outs when the best teams hit their straps and the strugglers begin to fall off the pace.

Meanwhile, the immediate impact of so many untested rule changes is the constant uneasy feeling that the momentum of a game — even the result — could be changed by the most incidental infringement.


With so many technical free kicks, possible disaster seems only a whistle away.

The confusion extends to "old rules" that are no longer enforced.

The crowd roars for holding the ball but players are permitted to throw it away if they are not deemed to have "prior opportunity".

Yet so much as sneeze in that "protected zone", niggle once (or is it twice?) too often, or get your numbers wrong at the centre bounce and you might have cost your team the game.

The impetus is on the players and the now heavily-burdened umpires to get it right in the heat of battle.

Rules have evolved over 150 years and teams have adapted.

Yet how many technical breaches do you impose on a game that was famously frenetic, physical and free before you have changed the entire nature of the sport?

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