ADELAIDE coach Phil Walsh has called for the AFL to reduce interchange rotations to 80 a game, suggesting it would make for a better spectacle.
The League set a cap of 120 rotations for the 2014 and 2015 seasons, but football operations boss Mark Evans will look at changes throughout this year.
Crows don't have all the 'ingredients' yet, says Walsh
Walsh, who is entering his first season as Adelaide coach, said the cap of 120 rotations wasn't low enough to address the game's interchange issues.
"I think 80 would have been the way to go," Walsh told The Age.
"We should have gone to 80. To me, 120 wasn't making a decision."
Considered one of the game's leading minds, Walsh held the title of strategy and innovations coach at West Coast between 2009 and 2013 when rotations were a growing issue in the game.
He is the first coach to publicly push for a reduction in rotations after the coaches lobbied to keep the current limit of 120 when they met with CEO Gill McLachlan last season.
Fremantle averaged the most rotations in the final year without regulation, recording 146 per game in 2013 and hitting 163 twice as they approached that year's finals series.
Adelaide (144.1), Greater Western Sydney (142), Hawthorn (141.7) and Geelong (140.7) also topped 140 a game in 2013.
"When it was getting up around 150, it just became an invasion game," Walsh said.
"Up and back, up and back ... I honestly don't think people like looking at a game when more than half of the ground is empty.
"If they reduced it to 80 we'd keep more people at home – keep a few up forward. At those NAB Cup trials people played last year, you saw more players staying up forward."
Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley, who worked with Walsh at the Power last season, opposed the idea of a reduction.
“Our game’s in pretty good shape - I don’t think we need to change too much,” Hinkley told SEN on Tuesday morning.
"Phil's always been strong on that idea, he said it last year when he was with us. It's not like he's gone, 'I'm a senior coach now I'm going to have this great idea'.
"He basically thinks the game should be played more that way, in trying to pull some of the traffic away from the contest.
"I haven't got the answer, because [with fewer rotations] I think I'd be demanding the players get to those spots still."
It has been reported the AFL will consider a drop to 100 rotations at the end of this season.
