Quote Originally Posted by mjp View Post
Oh yeah - you want to know something else?

After the umpire says stand, you cannot 'leave' the mark until play-on is called. You cannot hand the mark over to someone else, you cannot do a thing. If you move laterally, forwards or backwards - if you do anything more than jump up and down on the spot - that is 50m.

I'm sure the players will get it but it is seriously messing with my brain....
Apparently teams are experimenting with not manning the mark at all in the entire forward half of the ground (when the defensive team have the ball in their back half), as the man on the mark is useless anyway as they cannot take a single step laterally.

Terry Wallace circa 2000 vs Essendon is in play here. The idea is to speed the play up but there are circumstances where the kicker will now be kicking to a 17 vs 18 man zone making it harder to spot up a free player.

This will completely change the way teams set-up. It will have massive team selection issues too - defenders who can defend but have a poor tank will be lost to the game (Aaron Francis types - and where does this leave Will Gould?)
We may see some sides ditch their second ruck altogether especially with the cap reducing from 90 to 75. Other teams will play their ruck a kick behind the play a la Wynd (and English for the last 2/3rds of last year) and have a KPF take ruck duties in the forward third of the ground. Galaxy Coleman time!

This is going to infuriate fans more than 50m penalties for encroaching on the protected area from the side. The game will change substantially this year, and adding 'grey zone' for umpires to officiate makes the impossible task of umpiring AFL just that little bit harder.