Thoughts on the Interchanges cap?

Yeah, I'm not in favour of it particularly. I'd rather just see players play and coaches coach. The swapping of players to get match ups is an intriguing part of the sport and one of the key differences that makes the sport more 'intelligent' than most football codes.

I'd rather see at least two subs available. I'm all for 4 interchanges PLUS two subs. Then you could have a sub ruckman and a sub small utility on the bench and games wouldn't be ruined because of one injury.

You can't go cold turkey and bring it down to 80 when everyone was averaging around 130, that's almost halving current rotations.

At this stage it is probably that the rules committee has some sort of private agenda that they aren't sharing, because no clear cut reason has ever been offered to justify it. They've sited the attractiveness of the game but have never elaborated as to what exactly that means. I don't care if 3 players run to the bench after a goal, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that sentiment.

Maybe cap it at 120 for starters if the AFL really has to do it. But I still don't like it.

The AFL is afraid or not willing to allow the game the chance to evolve with the current set of rules. Almost every rule change is a knee-jerk reaction.

An interesting sideline to all this interchange nonsense is that Kevin Bartlett who seems to run the rules committee, is best mates with legendary coach Tommy Hafey. Its well known for many years Hafey was always reluctant, and often critisised for not making changes from the bench during games . It just seems all odd to me that Bartlett who never enjoyed training as a player, and who never played as a full time playing professional, like players today, insists on wanting to cap interchange movements, before as he suggests the game is ruined, The fact that current players complain continually of fatigue, due to work load is apparently ignored ?

I too would get rid of the Sub altogether, I absolutely despise that introduction to the game, imagine being a Sub, stuff that, sit there all game waiting for someone to get hurt so you can get on or wait til the last Q so you can be brought on as a super sub, hate it.

To be honest I would love to see a cap brought in, I think it's getting out of hand, the game is changing so much it's almost none recognisable if your my age, I don't want to be seen as living in the past but for f... sake, leave the game alone, I liked watching one on one duels, now it's all 'kick it to someone on their own' 'don't turn it over' it's so crucial in today's game, it's more like basketball and soccer in that regard every year. Make the cap 100 and be done with it, players will adapt, they'll have to.

But what do I know?

Im in favour of an interchange cap. I see the correlation between less rotations per game and players holding their positions thus eliminating "rolling mauls"

It's ridiculous when if comes in the flood will be back with a vengeance... Which won't make for a very entertaining game at all.

Personally I'd ditch the sub and have 4 interchange players as well as an unlimited interchange cap.