Sixty-four years ago, Uruguay pulled off
one of the greatest triumphs in the history of sport when they knocked off a
cocky Brazilian outfit who had already composed a celebratory samba. The venue,
the Estádio do Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro (then the national capital, now
merely the chef-lieu of the eponymous
state) would thus be an appropriate place for the serving-up of a second dose
of poetic justice.
Colombia’s two goals came from a familiar
source: James Rodríguez. The Monaco man has been one of the revelations of the
tournament, and the prospect of a quarter-final battle between he and Neymar is
positively mouth-watering. The first goal, in the twenty-eighth minute, came
from outside the box and seemingly out of nowhere. Surrounded on four sides by
sky blue shirts, he received Abel Aguilar’s header on his chest and twisted around
to volley the ball in off the underside of the bar. The second, five minutes
after the break, was a product of his fruitful combination with Juan Guillermo
Cuadrado, as Cuadrado headed a Pablo Armero cross down to James’ boot for his
fifth of the tournament. Both were, naturally, followed by those celebratory
dances along the goal line which have helped to make los cafeteros one of the most enjoyable teams to watch in Brazil.
It wasn’t all one-way traffic. Around the
half-hour mark, Colombia were saved by some brilliant Carlos Sánchez defending
and by Edinson Cavani misfiring a free kick over the bar. The statistical
indicators of Colombia’s dominance – a 64-36 possession count and a 5-1 lead in
shots on target at half-time – were worn down by the end of the match as la celeste had a much better second
half. A missile from Cristian Rodríguez was saved just after the hour, while an
Edinson Cavani shot had the same result six minutes from the end of normal time.
But this match was all about Luis Suárez; the
Uruguayan players posed with his shirt in the dressing room before the match as
their feral supporters chanted his name. It takes a sick country to rally
behind a knuckle-dragging sub-human thug who has bitten three opposition
players in four years, and an even sicker country to make excuses for his
actions and to blame it on some imagined conspiracy. This is why it was so
great to see la celeste lose.
Uruguay, it seems, combines the chip-on-the-shoulder mentality of the small
country surrounded by larger and better neighbours, and the sense of
entitlement that comes from being white in a multi-racial region of the world.
For them to lose to a team who play beautiful soccer and who contain so many
members of the black race that Suárez hates was thus an appropriate outcome, a
modern-day maracanazo. ¡Fuerza Colombia!
Colombia 2 (James Rodríguez
28’, 50’) – Uruguay
0
Cautions: José María Giménez (Uru.) 55’; Diego
Lugano (Uru.) 77’; Pablo Armero (Colo.) 78’
Every Napoleon, a wise man once said, has
his Watergate. (I think he meant to say Waterloo.) The great Spanish team which
won Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup, and Euro 2012 has met its Waterloo in
Brazil. Like the Victorian-era Scots with their Combination Game, the Austrian Wunderteam of the 1930s, the Hungarian Aranycsapat of the 1950s, and the Dutch
pioneers of totaalvoetbal, Spain
wowed the world with its tiki-taka
before everyone else worked out how to beat it. After 5-1 and 2-0 defeats to
the Netherlands and Chile respectively, the Spaniards have been made to look
like a band whose old stuff is so much better than their new stuff. In their
final group match, they faced a Socceroos outfit who had pushed the Chileans
and the Dutch all the way, and who hoped to leave Brazil with the scalp of the
reigning champions, something which looked possible even in the absence of the
suspended Tim Cahill.
The venue for this dead rubber was the
Estádio Joaquim Américo Guimarães, more commonly known as the Arena da Baixada,
located in Curitiba, capital of the southern state of Paraná. There had been
controversy in the lead-up to match about the state of the pitch; in fact, it
was in such a poor condition that your humble correspondent’s first thoughts
were that Ange Postecoglou had erred by not picking Shane Warne in the starting
eleven, such was its resemblance to a dusty spin-friendly wicket on the
Subcontinent.
The Spaniards, looking very haute couture in their black away
strips, had a few chances in the opening half-hour before the Melbourne Heart-
City-bound David Villa backheeled a pass from Juanfran to put them 1-0 up in
the thirty-sixth minute. The Socceroos, not looking as if they were missing
Cahill, had a few chances of their own and had obtained forty-three percent of
the possession by the break (this figure hit forty-five late in the match, a
telling statistic against the masters of tiki-taka).
Villa was taken off eleven minutes into the
second half to allow Juan Mata his first spell on the pitch of the tournament;
the Manchester United man would get his name on the scoresheet, but first it
was Fernando Torres’ turn. In the sixty-ninth minute, Andrés Iniesta broke
through the Australian defence to find Torres, who coolly slotted it home. Mata
made it 3-0 thirteen minutes later when, unmarked, he got on the end of a Cesc
Fàbregas cross and banged it through Mat Ryan’s legs. By the end, it felt that
the Socceroos’ defence was being too easily breached, but this shouldn’t
detract from the fact that they got out of this group with a goal difference of
minus six; a phenomenal improvement on their late-2013 form, which saw them
lose two consecutive friendlies to Brazil and France 6-0.
As far as Socceroo World Cup campaigns go,
it wasn’t 2006, but it wasn’t 1974 or 2010 either. The group table shows three
losses, but this is a team which led the Netherlands for four minutes and which
kept Spain down to fifty-five percent possession. Watch out for the Socceroos
in 2018.
Australia 0 – Spain 3
(David Villa 36’; Fernando Torres 69’; Juan Mata 82’)
With both teams needing a win to propel
themselves into second place in Group F behind Argentina, the first-ever
match-up between Nigeria and Bosnia promised to be an interesting contest,
played beneath the brutalist steel pillars of the Arena Pantanal. From the
first minute the Super Eagles signalled their intention to continue the
tournament’s trend of attacking play. They hit long balls into the box, drew
corners, and fired a seventh-minute free kick around the Bosnian wall and just
wide. When this failed, they sprinted forward on the counter-attack and fired
low from outside the box – and all this in the first quarter of an hour!
‘Goodluck Nigeria’ read a banner in the stands – a tip of the hat to the
country’s fedora-sporting president – but the
men in green weren’t content to rely on luck.
But on twenty minutes, it looked like the
Super Eagles’ luck had run out. A Bosnian through ball was slotted home by Edin
Džeko, only to be incorrectly and belatedly ruled offside by the Kiwi linesman.
The Manchester City forward had another go three minutes later, only to be
denied by the safe hands of goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama. Five minutes after
that, the Super Eagles’ peppering of the Bosnian goal finally paid off as Emmanuel
Emenike passed inside to Peter Odemwingie, who goaled easily to the sound of
Bosnian appeals for a foul against Emenike.
The opening section of the second half was
characterised by zmajevi attempting
to find a way through the mass of green shirts in the box. By this stage, they
had gained fifty-eight percent of the possession though the two sides had made
an equal amount of shots at goal. With the sweat making the players’ shirts
cling to their bodies in the mato-grossense
heat, Bosnian manager Safet Sušić was first with the tactical substitutions,
making all three allowable changes either side of the hour mark. Stephen Keshi
followed his lead, bringing on Newcastle United attacker Shola Ameobi soon afterwards.
The last half-hour was played at a much
slower tempo than had hitherto been the case, as a frustrated Bosnia attacked
and a tired Nigeria (with the exception of Emenike, who carried on like an
Energizer bunny) half-heartedly counter-attacked. The scoreline stayed at 1-0,
receiving its most serious challenge thirty seconds from time when a shot from
Džeko was deflected by Enyeama onto the post. It was an engaging and
hard-fought match in what is turning out to be the best World Cup of the modern
era. A sad way for Bosnia to go out of their first World Cup as an independent
nation, but your humble correspondent was left with the feeling that we’ll be
seeing a lot more of them at major tournaments in the years to come.
Nigeria 1 (Peter Odemwingie
29’) – Bosnia
and Herzegovina 0
Cautions: Haris Medunjanin (B. & H.) 6’;
John Obi Mikel (Nig.) 81’
The Estádio Beira-Rio, meaning
‘Beside-River Stadium’, in Porto Alegre, capital of the beef-producing and
heavily German southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, was the setting for the
Socceroos’ second match of the World Cup. And what a match it was.
Arjen Robben was named man of the match,
but it will be forever known as the game in which Tim Cahill scored one of the
greatest World Cup goals. It was Robben who scored first with a solo effort,
dribbling from the halfway line to just outside the six-yard box on the
counter-attack in the twentieth minute. Less than sixty seconds later, a loose
ball on the right wing was hammered towards the penalty area by a quick-thinking
Mathew Leckie. In said area were Cahill, two Dutch defenders, and goalkeeper
Jasper Cillessen. The ball landed perfectly at Cahill’s left foot and the
former Everton man slammed it in off the underside of the crossbar.
This wasn’t just a miraculous equaliser
destined to be wiped out by an inevitable Dutch recovery. The Socceroos had the
run of play for the remainder of the half, and when Daryl Janmaat was deemed to
have handballed an Australian cross in the fifty-third minute, Mile Jedinak
converted the resulting penalty. For four minutes, the Socceroos were leading
the masters of totaalvoetbal 2-1.
But before the prospect of beating the
Dutch could even be digested, a through ball to Robin van Persie was slotted
home for an equaliser. (Van Persie will miss the final group match against
Chile after being cautioned for giving Matthew Špiranović a good old-fashioned
elbow to the face.) Ten minutes later the men in orange went ahead thanks to a
missile delivered on the counter-attack by substitute Memphis Depay. The
Socceroos had been outclassed by superior opposition, but they never gave up,
achieving forty-eight percent of the possession.
Apart from losing, the only downside for i gialloverdi was the yellow card
incurred by Tim Cahill just before the break for collecting Bruno Martins Indi,
who landed awkwardly on his shoulder. He will miss the final match against
Spain; given how the rest of the team played in the final twenty minutes
following his substitution, that’s quite a blow to their chances of getting the
scalp of the fallen world champions.
The Socceroos have done us proud, and with
an easier draw could have gone as far as did the class of 2006. But there’s
still one more match. In five days’ time, they have the chance to stick the
knife into the past-their-use-by-date Spaniards in Curitiba. Forza Australia!!!
Australia 2 (Tim Cahill 21’;
Mile Jedinak 54’ pen.) – Netherlands 3 (Arjen Robben 20’; Robin van
Persie 58’; Memphis Depay 68’)
Cautions: Tim Cahill (Aust.) 43’; Robin van
Persie (Neth.) 47’
There are few teams your humble
correspondent has been more excited about seeing in action in Brazil than the
Belgians. An unheralded side appearing in its first World Cup since 2002, de rode duivels boast some of Europe’s
most interesting players – Eden Hazard, Vincent Kompany, Romelu Lukaku, Thibaut
Courtois, Marouane Fellaini, Adnan Januzaj. Their performances over the last
four years have given rise to the possibility to that a new name could be added
to the winners’ roll in 2014. In Belo Horizonte (‘beautiful horizon’), capital
of the dairy-producing state of Minas Gerais, they took on an Algerian team
which has quietly improved in the last four years to become the top national
selection in Africa.
The first part of the game was a
well-balanced affair, with both teams slowly finding their rhythm in the
scorching mineiro sunshine. Axel
Witsel began the serious attack, with a missile from outside the penalty area
to force a save in the twenty-first minute. Three minutes later, Sofiane Feghouli
was rushing to get on the end of a difficult cross when he was needlessly
brought down in the box by Jan Vertonghen. Feghouli converted truly and les fennecs were, against all
expectations, 1-0 up. Belgium, or (to be specific) Witsel and Nacer Chadli,
looked more likely for the rest of the half but, let down by some poor
set-pieces from Kevin de Bruyne, they couldn’t equalise before the break, even
with two-thirds of the possession.
The scoreline had a familiar ring to it. At
Gijón thirty-two years and a day prior, Algeria had been 1-0 up in their first
ever World Cup match against the heavyweight West Germans. On that day, les fennecs suffered an equaliser before
winning 2-1. Was history about to repeat itself?
Coach Marc Wilmots began the second half
with a tactical change, replacing Chadli with Napoli’s Dries Mertens. He used
up all three of his substitutions by the sixty-fifth minute, at which time
Marouane Fellaini was brought on. The first twenty-five minutes of the second
half were more of the same. Belgium tried to crack through the Algerian
defence, but the North Africans were only menacing at the front for brief
moments. It was five minutes after Fellaini’s introduction that les diables rouges found the equaliser
they had been looking for. Eden Hazard found de Bruyne with enough space to
line up a perfect cross, from which the mighty afro of Fellaini headed home the
golden generation’s first score on the biggest stage of all.
When Hazard passed laterally to Mertens to
set up the winner ten minutes later, it didn’t feel at all unexpected. After a
cautious start, Belgium spent the last twenty minutes putting on a footballing
masterclass of well-timed long balls, deft crosses, and classic playmaking from
Hazard. The tournament’s dark horses had survived their first scare, one that
will only serve to increase their urgency against Russia and South Korea.
It’s finally here. The Socceroos began
their fourth World Cup campaign on Saturday morning AEST with a match against
Chile, the side against whom they recorded their first ever result in a World
Cup when the two nations drew 0-0 in West Berlin in 1974. The venue was the Arena
Pantanal in the city of Cuiabá, least populous of the twelve host cities and
capital of the state of Mato Grosso, which shares a border with Bolivia.
It’s fair to say that little was expected
of this Socceroos squad going into the opening match. Unlike 2006 and 2010, the
low expectations of this tournament are more akin to 1974, when we were lumped
in with Haiti and Zaire as the Cup’s easybeats. Since former coach ‘Is The
Bread Holger’s?’ Osieck became toast after consecutive 6-0 friendly losses to
Brazil and France, Ange Postecoglou has built a disproportionately young and
A-League-based squad, from whom, it seems, the best we could hope for was to
play attacking football and to rebuild for 2018.
The received wisdom about the Chileans was
that, unlike Australia’s other two Group B opponents – Spain and the
Netherlands – who tend to monopolise possession, the Chileans prefer to attack,
but can by leaky in defence. With this in mind, the Socceroos played a friendly
earlier this year against Ecuador, supposed to be a similarly-structured team
to Chile, and lost 4-3 after leading 3-0 at half-time. Familiar faces in the
Chilean starting eleven include Juventus midfielder Arturo Vidal, barcelonista striker Alexis Sánchez, and
Cardiff City hard man Gary Medel. Given all this, we were set for what was
predicted to be the most exciting and winnable game of the Socceroos’ campaign,
but ultimately not one in which an upset was expected.
The Socceroos, clad all in yellow (matching
shirts and shorts being FIFA’s latest television-fuelled Brilliant Idea), had
the first chance of the game a few minutes in when Mark Bresciano crossed to
set up a Tim Cahill header. The match quickly settled into a steady rhythm,
both teams playing expansive passes to all parts of the pitch. Two early
Chilean goals showed the weakness of the Socceroos’ defence. In the twelfth
minute, the ball moved around in the box between a few chileño feet before being headed down to Alexis Sánchez, inexplicably
unmarked by any of the (at least) four Australian outfielders in the box, who
toe-poked into the bottom right-hand corner. The second arrived two minutes
later, when a run from near the benches was completed by Sánchez setting up
Chilean football’s enfant terrible,
Jorge Valdívia for a shot into the top left-hand corner.
For i
gialloverdi, chances were almost as plentiful, but relied on Tommy Oar or
Mathew Leckie crossing to Tim Cahill, or from a spate of low, speculative
strikes from Mark Bresciano in the middle third of the match. The only
breakthrough came in the thirty-fifth minute, when the rinse-and-repeat cross
to Cahill method resulted in a headed goal, although the former Everton man was
denied twice in the few minutes after half-time, once by some shirt-pulling by
the Chilean defender, and once by an offside call. A few more missed chances
and a yellow card from the Ivorian referee resulting from some argy-bargy in a
pre-half-time wall rounded out an ultimately frustrating day for him.
After having possession for less than a
third of the first half, the Socceroos came out firing after the break. A
fifteen-minute period played at a frenetic tempo resulted in the aforementioned
chances for Cahill, a miss for Leckie at close range, a caution for captain
Mile Jedinak, and the substitution of Arturo Vidal, who was brought off on the
hour mark after being overshadowed by Sánchez and Valdívia. The fruitless
period almost came to a crashing end a minute after, when an Eduardo Vargas
shot from inside the box was deflected by goalkeeper Mat Ryan and spectacularly
cleared off the line by Alex Wilkinson. Chilean coach Jorge Sampaoli, made to
look psychopathic at one point by some creepy close-up camera work by the SBS
crew, replaced Valdívia in the sixty-eighth minute with Wigan Athletic’s Jean
Beausejour. It proved to be a masterful decision: with Sánchez in receipt of
attention from Australia’s defenders (which earned Mark Milligan a yellow card
when he fouled the counter-attacking Barcelona forward), it was Beausejour who
latched onto a rebounded save in stoppage time to score Chile’s third.
For the Socceroos, it was an adequate
performance, leaving fans with the confidence that the men in verde y oro won’t be embarrassed against
the Netherlands and Spain, although the need to keep Sánchez out of the game
left too many key players one more caution away from a suspension. They now
head to Porto Alegre to face a Dutch side which demolished the world champions
5-1 earlier in the morning.
Chile 3 (Alexis Sánchez 12’;
Jorge Valdívia 14’; Jean Beausejour 92’) – Australia 1 (Tim Cahill 35’)
Cautions: Tim Cahill (Aust.) 44’; Mile
Jedinak (Aust.) 58’; Mark Milligan (Aust.) 68’; Charles Aránguiz (Chile) 86’
The Melbourne press this week is full of
speculation about what the AFL’s Laws of the Game committee are cooking up.
Many football fans, including your humble correspondent, are hoping something
will be done about the rolling mauls which blight the modern game. This post
will add some much-needed statistical analysis to the debate.
I recently calculated the following
statistics for every VFL/AFL season since the end of the First World War: goals
per team per match, behinds per team per match, score per team per match, and
ratio of goals to behinds. Based on this, we can divide football into the
following historical periods:
*1919-1924: teams averaged between sixty
and seventy points per match and between seventy and eighty-five goals per
hundred behinds.
*1925-1938: the introduction of a free kick
for out of bounds in 1925 (something which was unpopular in Victoria and was
pushed through the national governing body by South Australian and Tasmanian
delegates) led to an increase in the average score, which never again went
below seventy and which hit the nineties three times in the mid-1930s, and the
goals-per-hundred-behinds figure, which was consistently in the eighties and
nineties. This was the first era of the star full-forward, and the number of
one-sided matches involving the new clubs introduced in 1925 (Footscray, North
Melbourne, and Hawthorn) forced a reversion to the former out of bounds rule.
One replacement player was permitted per team in 1930, but this had little
effect on scoring rates.
*1939-1968: the boundary throw-in was
reintroduced in 1939. The resulting movement of the play away from the centre
of the ground lowered the goals-to behinds ratio (which stayed between 0.83 and
0.95 for the whole period) and the average score (which dropped below
seventy-one points in 1956 and 1960, and which only topped eighty points twice
between 1950 and 1968). Again, the addition of a second replacement player in
1946 had little effect on these statistics.
*1969-1977: in 1969, the modern distinction
between out of bounds and out of bounds on the full, with the later punished by
a free kick against the offending team, was introduced. The effect on scoring was
immediate: the average score jumped fifteen points between the 1968 and 1969
VFL seasons, dropping back below ninety in 1970 but remaining in the nineties
for the rest of the period. 1969 was also the first season in which more goals
were scored than behinds, and the ratio of goals to behinds now hovered between
0.94 and 1.01. Another rule change occurred in this era which had little
effect, namely the introduction in 1973 of a centre square, inside which no
more than four players per team could be positioned during the bounce.
*1978-1993: 1978 saw the switch from two
replacement players to a two-man interchange bench, with no limit on how often
players could come on and off the ground. The average score per team per match
hit triple figures for the first time in 1978, and only dipped below 100 three
times in the next fifteen seasons. The goals-per-behinds ratio also went up,
hitting 1.14 in 1987 and 1993, and making only one trip into negative figures
in 1981 (which, as of 2014, is the last season in which more behinds than goals
were scored). The other major rule change of this era was the introduction of
the fifty-metre penalty in 1988, which contributed to the trend towards higher
and more accurate scores.
*1994-1999: 1994 saw a revolution in the
way the game was played: the twenty-five minute quarters were shortened to
twenty minutes (although the stopping of the clock at boundary throw-ins means
that the change wasn’t as drastic as it would seem) and the number of field
umpires and interchange players were both increased from two to three. For the
following six seasons, the shorter matches reduced the average score to double
digits (it hovered between ninety and ninety-six for this period), but the
goals-to-behinds ratio continued its upward trajectory, hitting a new record of
1.15 in 1996 and 1999; the 1.09 figure from the 1997 season is the lowest of
any season post-1994.
*2000-2005: 2000 saw another radical change
in the way football was played. The scheduling of matches at the
newly-constructed Colonial Stadium, with its artificial turf and roof providing
protection from Melbourne’s winter weather allowed Essendon to make the most
serious tilt at an undefeated season in modern times. The average score in that
season hit 103.39, the only 100-plus season under the twenty-minute-quarter
regime, and the goals-to-behinds ratio hit 1.23, an all-time record. Things
stabilised in the next five seasons, with the average score hovering between 93
and 99 and the goals-to-behinds ratio hovering between 1.18 and 1.2.
*2006-2013: the introduction of new rules
limiting the amount of time players have to line up set shots might seem like a
minor change, but it has had a noticeable effect on accuracy rates. In the
eight full seasons played since, average scores have stayed between 90 and 98,
but the goals-to-behinds ratio has been pared back to the 1.1-1.17 range.
From this, we can see that in historical
perspective, today’s football is unnaturally high-scoring (given the reduction
in quarter length) and has too high a ratio of goals to behinds. A small part
of this can be attributed to the greater professionalism and fitness of modern
players. But the other reasons are due to the conditions under which the game
is played: 1) virtually unlimited interchange, which has made the sport too
athletic by allowing players to utilise short bursts of energy instead of
enduring one hundred minutes of football; 2) free kicks for out-of-bounds on
the full and deliberate out-of-bounds, which encourage players to move the ball
away from the boundary line, which in turn allows shots on goal to be taken
from better angles; and 3) the replacement of windy and poorly-drained suburban
grounds with roofed and astroturfed monstrosities like the Docklands (since the
start of the 2000 season, matches at the Docklands have seen, on average, seven
points per team more than matches played elsewhere).
You might ask what exactly is wrong with
high-scoring and accurate football. Firstly, high-scoring games between
unevenly-matched teams can quickly become one-sided. This is why the VFL
opposed the introduction of the free kick for out-of-bounds in 1925: they knew
that the newly-admitted Footscray, North Melbourne, and Hawthorn needed some
protection from regular drubbings at the hands of more established clubs.
Changing the match conditions to reduce scoring rates might have been a better
way of easing in the Gold Coast Suns and GWS Giants than the salary cap and
draft concessions.
Secondly, the way modern football is played
reduces the potential supply of league footballers. In 1923, a year in which
an average team scored nine goals and twelve behinds per match, Essendon won
the premiership with their so-called ‘Mosquito Fleet’ of six players under
five-and-a-half feet tall. Nowadays, the average height of players has jumped
considerably because shorter players are no longer needed to mop up waterlogged
balls off the floor of grounds like Waverley and the Western Oval. Fans often
bemoan the introduction of the Gold Coast and GWS due to the talent pool being
stretched more thinly with eighteen teams; but this overlooks the fact that in
the Good Old Days prior to unlimited interchange, twenty-minute quarters, and
boutique stadia, Australia had thirty top-tier clubs (twelve in the VFL, ten in
the SANFL, and eight in the WAFL).
And that brings us back to today. The most
fascinating proposed rule change is one restricting the movement of players,
something long considered a sacrilege in a sport which prides itself on its
lack of anything resembling an offside rule. The AFL is reportedly considering
promulgating a charter to guide the Laws of the Game Committee in its
deliberations, which would make some aspects of the game sacrosanct. According
the Patrick White in The Australian,
this would include the ability of players to move unmolested around the field.
Such a move by the league would block any efforts to restore the game as it was
historically played, and would have the effect of freezing forever the
post-2000 game of ‘on-ballers’, ‘taggers’, spells on the bench, rolling mauls,
and flooding.
In 1791, the revolutionary French
government abolished the French East India Company, which had been granted a
monopoly on trade with India by the monarchy. It was proudly announced that
henceforth, any Frenchman was free to trade with India, a freedom which was
rather meaningless to labourers and peasants who couldn’t exactly afford to
sail to Calcutta to buy tea and spices from some jumped-up maharajah. The
freedom of footballers to move anywhere on the ground is similarly useless.
There is no good reason why a full-forward should be in his defensive
fifty-metre arc, or why one half of the field should be completely deserted. An
off-side rule or netball-style zones would go a long way to reminding players
that there are supposed to eighteen distinct positions on the ground, and that
Wills and Harrison didn’t intend for their game to be played by thirty-six generic
midfielders. Moving to sixteen players per side, which produced some exciting
football in the VFA of the 1960s and 1970s, is another option. Rather than
being preserved in amber, the rules need to change in order to prevent the
fundamentals of the game being altered by canny coaches who fancy themselves as
the José Mourinho of the Antipodes.
Another example of this is the replacement
of players. The previous system of two replacements was replaced by a two-man
interchange bench in 1978. In the 1989 Grand Final, Hawthorn and Geelong made
twenty-three interchanges between them; when they met again in the 2008
decider, they made 163 between them. In the early 2000s, teams were making
between 20 and 40 interchanges per match (the least interchange-happy team
being Kevin Sheedy’s Essendon and the most being Fremantle). This season, the
league has had to cap the number of allowable interchanges per team per match
at 120, and in a match in 2012, the Gold Coast managed 176 rotations. The
result is that modern football is dominated by the type of player who can run
around like a headless chook, come off the ground for a spell, and then go back
on to run around like a headless chook (not to mention the ‘tagger’, who is the
bloke charged with running around like a headless chook after the bloke who is
running around like a headless chook). Capping the number of interchanges at
twelve (as the NRL does) or even going back to the days of the 19th
and 20th men would force players to hold their position and be
footballers instead of athletes.
It’s not all bad news, however. Twelve rounds
into the 2014 season, scoring and accuracy rates are down. The average score is
86.41, the lowest since 1968, when John Gorton was prime minister and decimal
currency was two years old. 110.2 goals are being scored per 100 behinds, the
second-lowest in the post-Waverley era. It’s possible that the 120-interchange
cap is having a positive impact (the AFL’s own statistics say that clubs are
limiting themselves to an average of 109 per match) or that the tendency
towards higher scoring is being nullified by better defence, but the Laws of
the Game Committee would have to do more than that if they wanted to restore
Football As We Knew It.
Good evening, Australia, and welcome to television
this blog.
Recently, while reading a report
on an A-League match on the website of the Australian edition of the Guardian, I read the following
description of the Central Coast Mariners’ performance in the Asian Champions
League: “…the Mariners were as enigmatic as a badger in a pince-nez and
jauntily-worn fedora…”. I’m still at a loss as to what badgers wearing hats has
to do with anything, but the line has convinced me that anyone can try their
hand at this sportswriting caper. Here, I will review matches from the AFL and the
soccer World Cup, analyse statistics and tactics, and write about my special
subject – the nexus between sport and politics.
