Ultra-football

There’s nothing I love more than the crisp aroma of a fresh Wikipedia article. It would appear that Aspirex has taken time out from his wonderful series of articles chronicling each season of the VFA-cum-VFL to write the definitive history of a forgotten episode in the history of our great game: the period between 1938 and 1949 when the Victorian Football Association and allied district leagues in central and north-eastern Victoria, Gippsland, and north-western Tasmania permitted the so-called ‘throw-pass’ as a means of disposing the ball to evade a tackle.

Of the five rule changes brought in by the VFA for its 1938 season, three have since become permanent features of football (the prohibition against dropping the ball, downfield free kicks, and players being able to take free kicks on behalf of an injured teammate). The fourth was the re-introduction of the boundary throw-in (a free kick had been awarded against the last player to touch the ball before it went out of bounds since 1925; the modern distinction between throw-ins and set kicks for ‘out on the full’ dates from 1969). It was the fifth rule change which had the greatest effect: players were allowed to make a two-handed throw, either forwards or backwards, as long as their hands remained below shoulder height; in other words, the throw was not intended to be a means of advancing the ball (as per the rugby codes) but instead a means of getting out of danger. (Contemporary reports suggest that throw-passes usually travelled fewer than ten yards.)

Even more interesting were the proposed rule changes which were not adopted. First, teams would be reduced to sixteen players by eliminating the ruckman and ruck-rover (the VFA did go to sixteen-a-side between 1959 and 1992, however it did so by eliminating the two wingmen). Second, centre bounces would be replaced by a kick-off. Third, only two players from each team could contest boundary throw-ins. Fourth, umpires could send players off (complaints about rough play had become common in the 1930s due to the proliferation of scrimmages). Fifth, three points would be awarded for hitting the post (a rule trialled many years later in the AFL’s 1996 one-off revival of the lightning premiership, complete with [if I remember correctly] red flags waved by the goal umpires).

(An extended aside. Doing some ‘troving’, I found this set of rule changes proposed contemporaneously in the Ballarat League. Many are similar to the VFA’s ideas, except that the Ballarat administrators wanted to do away with behinds and award three points for a goal and one for a ‘poster’.)

The idea that the VFA’s rule changes constituted the formation of a separate football code is not a commonly-accepted one, and the split did not possess the social and political je ne sais quoi of that between the two rugby codes. Nevertheless, because the history of the sport has been written by the winners (i.e. the VFL-cum-AFL), the improvements made by the VFA have never quite gotten the recognition they deserve.

I use the word ‘improvements’ deliberately. In the first season of the new rules, the average score per team per match jumped from 84.74 points to 100.46. The 1938 Grand Final, played at Toorak Park between Brunswick (the Magpies; black and white stripes) and Brighton (the Cabbage Growers; white with red yoke) produced only six ball-ups, somewhat down on the 65.9 seen in the first round of this year’s AFL season, and thirty-eight boundary throw-ins. Furthermore, the VFA entered one of its golden eras, signing big names like Ron Todd, Bob Pratt, and Laurie Nash away from the junior circuit.

Until its abandonment of the throw-pass in exchange for a seat at the table of the sport’s governing body, the football produced in the VFA was fast, furious, and free-flowing. By contrast, the football played today is blighted by constant stoppages caused by players not doing enough to evade tackles and by the scrimmages which inevitably form at ball-ups and boundary throw-ins. The increasing number of ruck duels as well as the hard surface at Docklands Stadium has led to the dominance of tall players, and the art of kicking from set shots has declined due to the enforcement of a time limit.

In reviewing the second round match between Port Adelaide and Sydney at the Adelaide Oval, this blog marvelled at the intensity of the first quarter of that match, labelling it (in an obscure reference to a line of dialogue from a Spanish film screened on SBS2 earlier that morning) ‘ultra-football’. What made that quarter ‘special’ (to use a Bruce McAvaneyism) was the constant defensive pressure applied by both sides. The ball was being jarred loose by the ferocity of the tackling, and players about to be tackled preferred to get rid of the ball rather than let their opponents get settled in at a ruck contest.

The VFA’s proposed rule changes of 1938 would go a long way to making every quarter of football like that one. My proposal is that the AFL adopt all of them, with the exception of the reduction of teams to sixteen players (we don’t want to eliminate ruckmen entirely, just reduce the exaltation of height in the modern game) and the granting to the umpires the power to send players off (let the tribunal handle that sort of thing).

But, of course, they won’t. Twenty-minute quarters and constant stoppages make the game more digestible for casual television audiences at the expense of the integrity and heritage of the sport. Perhaps a split like the one that existed between 1938 and 1949 is exactly what football needs.