The past decade of AFL football has seen an increase in league rule changes, which are often reactive and not in the interests of the game’s aesthetic
It’s probably best to start this missive with a promise: what follows is not another self-indulgent paean to the glory of 1990s football, or some wistful plea for the return of torpedoes, $1.50 meat pies and Jason Dunstall kicking the ton every year. But … even discounting the breathless outrage surrounding Callum Mills’ rushed behind for Sydney last weekend, the rules of AFL football are now a topic so maddening that one could be excused for seeking solace in the nostalgic comforts of Allen Jakovich’s AFL Tables page.
Let’s get the Mills one out of the way first. You wouldn’t know it from the league’s flip-flopping approach to the issue over the past decade, but a deliberate rushed behind really is a black and white scenario: either you’ve deliberately rushed a behind or you haven’t. Pressure, as St Kilda coach Alan Richardson suggested this week, should not come into it. Because what is pressure, exactly? How can a sprinting, breathless, neck-craning, perhaps out-of-position umpire really tell what is going through the mind of a defender as he rushes a behind in real time?
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These laws explain how a match of Australian football is played and seek to attain the following objectives:
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