Just a couple of short years ago there was much talk about the desperate need to legislate against flooding because it was going to ruin the game.
Nothing was done and currently every team floods back in even greater numbers at certain times in a match. We are so accustomed to this defensive flood that we now take little notice. It goes to prove that normal is simply what happens all the time.
Generally, with the simple philosophy of action and re-action, trend and counter-trend, footy finds a way to even things out.
Personally, I like footy best when the kick to handball ratio is around two kicks and one handball.
It is worth remembering that no team handballs if they have the time and space to have a well-balanced kick.
Even Geelong, a team that has successfully perfected a style where they handball more often than they kick, only does so because it often takes a few handballs to finally release a teammate into the clear.
The quick kick forward out of the mass congestion around the footy is not currently in vogue and when struggling teams, in round five read Adelaide and Essendon, continue to follow the Geelong method of trying to handball their way out of trouble, the resultant turnovers are disastrous.
This high handball footy has evolved because the pressure on the ball carrier has never been hotter.
While specialist tackling coaches have honed good technique, it is the large numbers of players with the energy to surround the footy that is the main catalyst for the increased need to handball because of the difficulty in finding the space to deliver an unpressured kick.
The correlation between interchange rotations going from an average of 36 in 2005 to 111 in 2010, the huge increase in tackling pressure and the resultant explosion in handball numbers are closely linked.
It is the use of the interchange bench to rest players regularly that enables them to play with such high energy in their spurts on the field.
When players fatigue, the first drop off is in the urge to run to the contest or to a zoning position and the next is the enthusiasm to chase and tackle.
The interchange system needs to be monitored because its current use is having many repercussions.
I’ve got to admit that I have a growing inkling that perhaps the game might be better if we switched from four straight interchange players as we have now to two interchange players and two substitutes.
Two players could be interchanged as often as the coach wanted, and the other two would be for injury or tactical replacement. Whoever the substitutes replaced could not go back.
No doubt this would slow the game down a little, but I’m thinking we’d only be going back three or fours years and that might not be such a bad thing.
I’m not totally convinced yet and I’d like to see how things evolve through the course of this season, but it’s certainly a firm leaning I have developed in order to help make our game more football than handball.
The other big reason is that I want to see the best players on the ground for as close to 100 per cent of the time as possible - not 80 per cent of the same as has become common for most players.
Right now that’s simply not possible because they cannot maintain the required tempo without being interchanged once or twice a quarter.
But one thing I know for sure - as we increase interchanges, we increase tackling and we increase handballs. And I prefer a game when players actually kick the ball more than handball and more importantly I think the fans do as well.
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
