JUST how serious is the AFL about ridding the competition of player congestion?
Serious enough to toy with reducing team sizes, excluding interchange players, from 18 to 16.
Rule changes don't get more radical than this.
But AFL game analysis manager Andrew McKay told the Herald Sun the League had last year discussed with the clubs the possibility of trialling 16-man sides in this year's NAB Cup.
Along with the rule change the AFL eventually settled for (the bench of three interchange players and a substitute introduced for the home and away season), a 16-man side was seen as way to reduce congestion by hastening player fatigue and ensuring they can't run to as many contests.
Can you imagine what coaches already worried about the impact of the three-man interchange - see Michelangelo Rucci's report in The Advertiser on Wednesday - would have made of this? Any flies on the wall at the AFL-club briefings would surely have some tales to tell.
Coach and club grumblings aside, what about the rest of us who grew up trying to make our school or local first 18?
Yes, the VFA at one time had 16-man sides, but 'first 18' is part of footy's vernacular. First 16 just doesn't roll off the tongue the same way.
However, it's something we might have to get used to. McKay told the Herald Sun 16-man sides remained a possibility.
"It's not out of the question - who knows?" he said.
Footy traditionalists beware.
Costello reloads
Two weeks after saying the thought of footballers at school clinics with impressionable young girls was enough to make parents "quake with fear", Age columnist and former Peter Costello has turned his sights on the media and Ricky Nixon.
Standing by his original depiction of footballers as image-obsessed narcissists who should not attempt anything more cerebral than chasing a piece of pigskin around a park, Costello said the backlash that had since come his way had been perpetuated by a media who were more interested in maintaining football industry solidarity than reporting the truth.
Speaking out against the AFL was too intimidating, he wrote. Highly insulting stuff, for any self-respecting journo.
Costello then touched on the recent Nixon scandal, saying it had come about following a visit of some of his player stable to her school - proof, he seemed to suggest, parents should be quaking with fear before any AFL clinics at schools.
But, as in his original column, he neglected to say the Nixon-managed players in question, Sam Gilbert and David Armitage, did not meet the girl at that clinic, but subsequently at a Sydney night club.
Unlike lowly journalists, perhaps star columnists don't have to concerns themselves with trifling matters like checking facts.
Coach poaching
Interesting report by Caroline Wilson in The Age on Wednesday about concerns among AFL clubs and senior coaches about the recent high volume of assistant coach defections.
Wilson said the fact 30 of the competition's 116 assistants had changed clubs at the end of 2010 had led to the formation of a AFLCA-led working party that will meet next week to examine the working relationships between assistants and clubs.
Chief among club and senior coach concerns, Wilson says, are the poaching of highly rated assistants by rich clubs and the intellectual property they take to a new club.
All valid concerns but we can't help but think of the uncertain existence the average assistant coach faces given his future is often tied to his senior coach's. We've seen countless left without a job - if only temporarily - when their boss gets the sack.
We trust the AFLCA will find the right balance.
Hunted will become hunters
It seems the GWS should enjoy the next two years. Because while it is a player poacher now - armed with an AFL-boosted salary cap and a two-year window to snag uncontracted players - the AFL clubs it is preying on will soon turn on it and the Gold Coast Suns who preyed on them last year.
North Melbourne coach Brad Scott made that clear in The Age on Wednesday.
Scott said North was mindful it faced a challenge to stop star midfielder Andrew Swallow from shifting to the Gold Coast to play with his younger brother David, but said North would also target David when the brothers both come out of contract at the end of 2013.
You can bet other clubs will be on the hunt too.
In short
High profile sports doctor Peter Larkins has called for football bodies to ban pseudoephedrine in the wake of WAFL player Travis Casserly's two-year ban for exceeding the maximum allowable dosage, The Age reports.
Adelaide has indicated it may elevate two rookies before the home and away season, with mature-aged recruit Ian Callinan and midfielder Matthew Wright both impressing this pre-season, The Advertiser reports.
While its captain Gary Ablett remains on the sidelines, Gold Coast has been buoyed by the news vice-captain Nathan Bock will make his club debut in the NAB Challenge match against the Sydney Swans at Southport on Saturday, The Courier Mail reports.
Kevin Sheedy has admitted his GWS side has been treated like the "witch's hats" used in training drills during the NAB pre-season competition, but said the Giants were worthy opposition for other AFL clubs, the Herald Sun reports.
More Media watch here
The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
