From next year the AFL is restricting the bench to from 4 to 3 players.This will make it harder for teams,with injured players to get momentum.
What do you think or believe about the changes?
is it better or worse ?
Lexicographer
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I think it may well have the opposite effect. Many have said on here of late that the interchange rate has created teams full of utility players because they are in a different position every time they run back on. Coaches have openly said that most of the time they really don't know who is playing directly on who until they see it happen on the field after an interchange. This plus a minute for a runner to effect a change means that they can lose control of a position for 3 or 4 minutes - enough time to lose a game.
By cutting the 100 + interchanges per team back to 70 or so, man on man match-ups will be extended, requiring players to strengthen their positional play skills and this has to be good for the spectators. It will never go back to the pre AFL days when you spent the week before the game learning the nuances of your likely opponent for the whole game eg. Left or right foot kick, preferred turn left or right, his take off foot when marking, does he hear footsteps, what frees does he give away most ... and so on, AND knowing he was putting in the same home-work on your game.
Last year's stats on injuries were horrendous - 20% more players losing 30% more games through injury than ever before, the worst being 14 out of a squad at the same time. A 25+% chance every year that a player will be on the injury list - what a career prospect !
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The AFL hierarchy keep bringing in rules to make the game faster, to the detriment of the players, and when teams find a way to stay within the rules, but also to the benefit (health) of the players, the AFL changes the rules.
I hope that in 2011, a player gets seriously injured - career ending - and it is determined that these rules were cause for such an injury, and that player takes the AFL for all it's worth.
Start thinking of the players instead of the almighty $$$. Without players, there wouldn't be any $$$.
This is Not My Account
I don't see it making much of a difference apart from the fact that second ruckmen will rarely be taken into matches as anything other than a sub. So there'll be plenty of guys who might find themselves not getting a game. Not sure if it's a bad thing though because a lot of them were only getting games because they were fit and 200cm tall anyway. Mark Blake, Simon Taylor and the like will probably be forced back into the VFL were they belong ;)
Some people are suggesting Collingwood will be all of a sudden disadvantaged because it will effect their ability to interchange. These people seem to forget that every club interchanges, Collingwood do it more, but have been doing so for a number of years. So it's not what won the 2010 premiership. The Pies are just fitter and more even than any other club at the moment, and they will be with 21 players or 22.
Lexicographer - Interchanges will average over 100 a game next year, no doubt about it. You can still rotate 3 players over 100 times in a match. And those injury figures sound like AFL propaganda to me. You'd think if they were accurate, we might have maybe seen them in the media when the rule was announced, or maybe the drongos at AFL house would have mentioned it in their presser so as to tone down the response they got? Neither happened, you're the only one I've seen suggest that injuries are up with any substance. Clubs who interchange the highest have even suggested their injury rate has dropped!
Now for the argument that the only way to increase injuries is to increase interchanges, what a load of crap! Brisbane and Essendon are the two clubs who've suffered more injuries that any other over the past 2 seasons, and where do they play all their games? The Grabba and the Death Dome for christs sake! The two most dangerous grounds in the league. Plus both clubs have absolutely pathetic administrations at the moment, so probably aren't spending the required dollars on their medical departments. When we consider that the two teams who interchange the most played off in not one, but two grand finals this year and so obviously had very manageable injury lists, then it's pretty clear that the connection between injuries and interchanges is an AFL lie designed to protect Etihad Stadium and the Gabba from negative media reports. Though it's also being pushed by senile old fools who don't understand, and so try to control, the evolution of AFL coaching tactics, led by Leigh Matthews.
shifty
Advantage of the new look interchange bench for 2011. if a team looses a player due to an injury. and he cant return to play for the rest of the game. then there will be a substitute player there waiting to run on. if this does happen.
Disadvantage. teams will have to be more efficient with there rotations as they will only have 3 in stead of 4, as we have now. interchange players available for rotations from the bench. but still a team maybe further disadvantaged if they happen to loose more than 1 player due to injury in the same game.
The AFLs theory behind the change is that less rotations= slowing the game down. less chance of injury.
I for 1 wont buy into this theory. until i see some figures over the next couple of seasons. that say these changes have done exactly that.
cheers.
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the AFL is simply trying to reduce the number of rotations off the bench which is rapidly becoming a farce. playing must think they are in revolving doors.