18 down to 16 players on the field

[Hotdog60]

Re: 18 down to 16 players on the field

Players will fatigue more and skills will drop off and also don't forget soft tissue injuries, the game will go backwards in a bad way.
Then they will try and introduce more rule changes to fix up the shitty changes they did the first time and the never ending cycle continues.
I think half of this is because management is too top heavy and employees trying to justify their pay packet.

[Bornadog]

Re: 18 down to 16 players on the field

Players will fatigue more and skills will drop off and also don't forget soft tissue injuries, the game will go backwards in a bad way.
Then they will try and introduce more rule changes to fix up the shitty changes they did the first time and the never ending cycle continues.
I think half of this is because management is too top heavy and employees trying to justify their pay packet.

Over 500 people in AFL house. That is where you can save money.

At club land leave everything as is, ie player lists, coaching and football department

[Twodogs]

Re: 18 down to 16 players on the field

Back in the days when the VFA deleted the wing players there were a number of times that the ball seemed to have nobody within cooee of it. This resulted in several seconds of dead TV time while we all waited for a player to arrive.

That used to happen in VFL footy too back in the day. It's more to do with player fitness than the amount of players on the ground I reckon.

The idea was to cut the wings but coaches weren't onboard with that and tended to remove the forward pockets instead. It meant there were lots of key forwards kicking big bags of goals every week

[josie]

Re: 18 down to 16 players on the field

I hate the idea of shortened quarters beyond this year (ok for this year due to more games squeezed in over a week due to extraordinary circumstances). And I hate the idea of fewer on ground players too. No need for it from a fan perspective and detracts from the game we love. I like the fact endurance is part of the game and the chance of late quarter comebacks so the shorter quarter sucks part of that potential comeback away. And the 16 players idea - Grrrr- lets just make it non contact 11 a side and call it soccer with a weird shaped ball then.

And whilst I am grumbling.....I loved the 3rd man up at ruck in 2016. Not only did we benefit but I thought it added interest and if you are as good as Grundy then you’ll still ruck to advantage a lot anyway. And what happened to dropping the ball rule? Had it been officially removed because if it has not and if they applied it properly then quite a few congested passages of play would disappear.

[Rocket Science]

Re: 18 down to 16 players on the field

Why?

I mean apart from the fact they can't help themselves.

[FrediKanoute]

Re: 18 down to 16 players on the field

So.….I'll say it again, coaches are inherently defencively minded first. This means that they will just clog up as much space as they can with 16 players instead of 18 players. This means there's going to be two less options to give the ball to on the way out of defence.

It will do nothing for scoring and won't materially change congestion where coaches deem congestion necessary.

Incentivise the coaches to kick more goals and they will kick more goals.

I agree. Was a dumb idea for the VFA and didn't really add anything and is a dumb idea for the AFL. LEAVE the F!*KING game alone

[SonofScray]

Re: 18 down to 16 players on the field

There is a historical precedent (and current in AFLW). The flaw is that these changes are trying to manipulate a game style. On that front, all the AFL rule changes have been folly. There is no prescriptive measure of what is a good game of footy. It's a contest. The appeal is within the contest.

16 players, bigger bench, adjust time on rules, extra players on the list, more games for a full home and away season. I could live with those type of changes if they were carefully introduced and rationalised. But not rule changes to cultivate a particular style of footy.