Ending congestion

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With a (further) reduction of interchange scenario the emphasis will be even more on athletic ability and less on skill. They reduced it somewhat already and they made it so that some players are not within cooee of the ball at the bounce after a goal and congestion is worse than ever.

Its possible some coaches may go down this route, but long term it wont work.

Good kicking and footy smarts will win out.

Ross Lyon was quoted as saying he rates effort over skill, ultimately his game plan was never sucessful.

Justin Longmuir was quoted recently as saying he needs to improve the Dockers woeful skills.

JUST WTF was Lyon doing for 7/8 years, sticking to his nauseating negative game plan that fatigued and implemented a negative mindset amongst his players.

Drafting actual footballers who may lack some athletic abilities is not a negative.

No point getting the ball with all that athletic ability and turning it over to a team with less but better kicking to postion and footy smarts.

I disagree with your theory.
 
Its possible some coaches may go down this route, but long term it wont work.

Good kicking and footy smarts will win out.

Ross Lyon was quoted as saying he rates effort over skill, ultimately his game plan was never sucessful.

Justin Longmuir was quoted recently as saying he needs to improve the Dockers woeful skills.

JUST WTF was Lyon doing for 7/8 years, sticking to his nauseating negative game plan that fatigued and implemented a negative mindset amongst his players.

Drafting actual footballers who may lack some athletic abilities is not a negative.

No point getting the ball with all that athletic ability and turning it over to a team with less but better kicking to postion and footy smarts.

I disagree with your theory.
There certainly needs to be a level of skill. Tell me though, if the opposition gets the ball first how can you execute those skills?
 

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Interchange has been reduced. Has it had a material impact? I don’t think so.

In fact stoppages will increase even more as players are too fatigued to move the ball on. It’s just a pile-on.

You simply have to reduce stoppages. That’s all you can do to fix it and stop it becoming rugby union.

It’s one of the biggest unique traits of AF. The game always kept moving.

You have to eliminate stoppages.

Just take away the divine right to hold onto the ball.

Don’t take possession - if you do you have to break a tackle - if you don’t you have to dispose - if you don’t it’s a free kick.
 
Interchange has been reduced. Has it had a material impact? I don’t think so.

In fact stoppages will increase even more as players are too fatigued to move the ball on. It’s just a pile-on.

You simply have to reduce stoppages. That’s all you can do to fix it and stop it becoming rugby union.

It’s one of the biggest unique traits of AF. The game always kept moving.

You have to eliminate stoppages.

Just take away the divine right to hold onto the ball.

Don’t take possession - if you do you have to break a tackle - if you don’t you have to dispose - if you don’t it’s a free kick.

Interchange needs to be reduced more, that stops players getting to the ball in numbers and promotes more positional play, it doesnt mean players will be more fatigued, its means as like now they pace themselves.

Take heed of the sports scientist the AFL enlisted/employed every year but then dismissed him when they didn't like his findings.

You can guarantee the AFL got it wrong!

He suggested around 30 I/C per game not including changes at the breaks.
 
Interchange has been reduced. Has it had a material impact? I don’t think so.

In fact stoppages will increase even more as players are too fatigued to move the ball on. It’s just a pile-on.

You simply have to reduce stoppages. That’s all you can do to fix it and stop it becoming rugby union.

It’s one of the biggest unique traits of AF. The game always kept moving.

You have to eliminate stoppages.

Just take away the divine right to hold onto the ball.

Don’t take possession - if you do you have to break a tackle - if you don’t you have to dispose - if you don’t it’s a free kick.
Everything that has happened since prior opportunity was introduced makes this rule change harder to conceive. Reducing turnovers, controlling stoppages, and beating the opposition on the spread are basically the key indicators of success in the modern game. This rule change would see increased turnovers, fewer stoppages, and reduces the advantage of numbers at the contest. With a faster moving ball, the key indicators are more like 1v1s, marks, disposal efficiency.

Right now we imagine a HTB decision to be so damaging because we are used to low scores and possession under pressure. Free kicks release all that pressure and break the structures. Sometimes they can even lead to goals, heaven help us.

In a version of the game where everyone is desperate to avoid being tackled, tackling would become rarer, but better rewarded. To paraphrase Bob Murphy, there would be more of the "cheetah taking down a gazelle" tackles, rather than the "fall-on-top-of" tackles.

Would love to see a pre-season trial... surely if AFLX got a run...
 
Years ago, the holding the ball rule was applied in the manner suggested in the initial post. That was at the time of no interchange. Congestion was usually (not always) less back then. Players were less skilled, less fit, and not coached in such effective negative tactics. All of these would have to be changed to cut modern day congestion, and that clearly is not going to happen.
I have believed since interchange became a tactical weapon that it has had a bad effect on the game. The interpretation of what holding the ball means has also caused a fair bit of the congestion. Professionalism and intensive defensive coaching also bear a heavy burden of responsibility, and these are not going away. I can't see the game regaining its open flow. That is dead, and we are all the poorer for it.
 
Interchange needs to be reduced more, that stops players getting to the ball in numbers and promotes more positional play, it doesnt mean players will be more fatigued, its means as like now they pace themselves.

Take heed of the sports scientist the AFL enlisted/employed every year but then dismissed him when they didn't like his findings.

You can guarantee the AFL got it wrong!

He suggested around 30 I/C per game not including changes at the breaks.
So well summarised.
 
Quicken the game up and there won’t be congestion. Umpires take 10 seconds to make decisions like with holding the ball. They stand there and wait and wait and wait to make a decision. Blow the whistle once’s the ball is held in and also pay holding the ball. Then there is the stoppages, they take up to 12 seconds from the stoppage to restarting the game.
 
Quicken the game up and there won’t be congestion. Umpires take 10 seconds to make decisions like with holding the ball. They stand there and wait and wait and wait to make a decision. Blow the whistle once’s the ball is held in and also pay holding the ball. Then there is the stoppages, they take up to 12 seconds from the stoppage to restarting the game.
Agreed, a la 90s. 3rd man in then it's balled up quick as. Don't wait til it looks like rugby.
 

Blah blah blah... yes, Kingy, it's fatigue, have unlimited interchange so we can have 18 fit players running to every stoppage, which occur every 20 seconds. That'll work.

It was on show again all weekend in the Marsh series. Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Just. Get. Rid. Of. The. Stoppages.

If you're caught, you're gone.
 

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Blah blah blah... yes, Kingy, it's fatigue, have unlimited interchange so we can have 18 fit players running to every stoppage, which occur every 20 seconds. That'll work.

It was on show again all weekend in the Marsh series. Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Just. Get. Rid. Of. The. Stoppages.

If you're caught, you're gone.
The game was free flowing because it was an exhibition match and players went easy on each other. Plus they were doing very low % passes (trick handballs over the head etc) rather than waiting to get tackled if there isn't a better option.

Do you have quarter by quarter stats for scoring available? I've looked but can't find them. My feeling is that games are tighter in the first half and open up in the second when players are more tired, contradicting the idea that skills drop off. Play opens up imo.

And yeah, strict htb interpretation. 👍🏻
 

Blah blah blah... yes, Kingy, it's fatigue, have unlimited interchange so we can have 18 fit players running to every stoppage, which occur every 20 seconds. That'll work.

It was on show again all weekend in the Marsh series. Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Grab ball, wrapped up in tackle, stoppage.

Just. Get. Rid. Of. The. Stoppages.

If you're caught, you're gone.
But aren't we being told here (not by you and I) that exhaustion (capping interchange) is the answer? We had all those fresh players running around yet there was very little congestion.

Of course, the game was 'designed' to be free flowing because the result didn't really matter, so coaches weren't telling their players to bottle it up.
 
I actually agree that turfing the interchange cap is more likely to make the game more attractive and make congestion easier to break, but yeah you can't really make judgements out of mickey mouse matches. Though it's not entirely a coincidence (IMO) that scoring has plummeted since they introduced the cap....
 
Capping I/C to 10 a quarter despite negative coaching will see players gravitate towards positional play.

Positional play will see the game open up.

Optimistic, but it won’t work.

Coaches will find a way around it. There’s literally hundreds of full time coaches, strategists and analysts employed in the AFL to work this stuff out. And they live for one thing: stoppages. Because that’s where their plans can be put into action. They can plan for a ball up or a boundary throw in.

You have to take away the stoppages. That’s the root of it all. All the clogging, all the flooding, all the zones, everything. It’s all built around stoppages. Get rid of them and the game opens up.

Interchange then won’t matter. In fact, higher interchange may be better because fresher players move the ball quicker and will more accuracy. Trying to fatigue players is absolutely ridiculous from the AFL. They’re literally trying to make the game worse to combat a problem they themselves created.
 
Getting rid of interchange won't lead to more fatigued players.

It's like saying an 1500m runner will be more fatigued at the end of a race than an 800m runner.
 
Getting rid of interchange won't lead to more fatigued players.

It's like saying an 1500m runner will be more fatigued at the end of a race than an 800m runner.

Players will still have the same fitness but will have to space themselves or limit themselves to the amount of running or they will be fatigued because of less opportunity to sit down and recharge.

When less players get to the ball or are around the ball, the game will open up.

That actually does not mean skills will slip or one sided scores occur.
 
Reckon if you cut the interchange limits you’ll just see the coaches draft more players who can get from contest to contest regardless of skill level. That will make the game even worse given that the amount of stoppages probably won’t decline and recruiters will start prioritising athletes over footballers.

The only way to beat congestion is to deincentivise stoppages. Beyond extreme rule changes though I don’t know how you do that.
 
Players will still have the same fitness but will have to space themselves or limit themselves to the amount of running or they will be fatigued because of less opportunity to sit down and recharge.

When less players get to the ball or are around the ball, the game will open up.

That actually does not mean skills will slip or one sided scores occur.

Exactly.

People talk like players will play exactly the same way and then die in the ass 10 minutes in and fall over.
 
Reckon if you cut the interchange limits you’ll just see the coaches draft more players who can get from contest to contest regardless of skill level. That will make the game even worse given that the amount of stoppages probably won’t decline and recruiters will start prioritising athletes over footballers.

The only way to beat congestion is to deincentivise stoppages. Beyond extreme rule changes though I don’t know how you do that.

Disagree 100%, they will just turn it over to a team who can kick to each other, having said that, you need a certain amount of all types of players in any successful team.

Spreading the game out will result in less stoppages.
 
Reckon if you cut the interchange limits you’ll just see the coaches draft more players who can get from contest to contest regardless of skill level. That will make the game even worse given that the amount of stoppages probably won’t decline and recruiters will start prioritising athletes over footballers.

The only way to beat congestion is to deincentivise stoppages. Beyond extreme rule changes though I don’t know how you do that.

If they do that it makes it much easier for a coach that wants to pick real footballers and play more positionally to win.

Right now it's not possible because interchange let's you plays skilled players and cover ground.

With no interchange you have to choose.
 

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Ending congestion

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