An Anti-Purist Manifesto

This blog should really be sub-titled ‘The Anti-Purist’. Over the last few years, having observed debates about unlimited interchange in the AFL and NRL, about the rise of such formats as rugby sevens and T20 cricket, about the entry of the Red Bull-backed club RB Leipzig into the Bundesliga, and about doping and sports science, I have come to realise the limitations of the ‘purist’ view of sport.

When I speak of ‘purism’, I have four things in mind. First, the purist believes that his sport is – or should be – dominated by players and teams with better ‘skills’ than their opponents. The AFL purist bemoans the recruitment of “athletes over footballers”; the rugby union purist disparages modern players as “gym junkies”. Tactics, training, and sports science are anathema to the purist.

Second, the purist is generally opposed to technological innovation in his chosen sport. This can include players’ equipment (such as meatier cricket bats, graphite tennis racquets, or lacrosse sticks with pinched heads), the playing arena itself (in the case of artificial turf or better-prepared cricket pitches), or the use of video referees.

Third, the purist is nationalistic about his sport, crying foul at innovations that appear to make it more like another sport. Examples: the cricket purist thinks T20 is too much like baseball; the rugby purist thinks any lessening of the contest for possession makes union more like league; the netball purist opposes two-point goals as making the game too much like basketball; the soccer purist opposes anything they see as pandering to American TV dollars, i.e. pretty much any change to their sport.

Fourth, the purist is the defender of the interests of the ‘fans’, a term usually referring only to those who watch the game in the stands. Night-time or day-night matches, sponsor-named stadia and trophies, technicolour uniforms, relocation, expansion, and innovative competition formats are all opposed and taken as evidence that the relevant league or governing body is conspiring against the ‘fans’.

In contrast, I intend to use this blog as a platform to present what I call the ‘modernist’ view of sport. The modernist welcomes the deployment of tactics, training methods, and sports science – some, including this blog, would legalise doping as merely another frontier of sports science. The modernist sees the positive effects of technology and hails the cross-pollination of ideas and personnel between sports. The modernist also takes a multi-stakeholder view of sport, realising that players, sponsors, broadcasters, betting companies, and equipment and apparel manufacturers have legitimate interests in the governance of sport, as opposed to the fan-centric stance of the purist.

Where the purist is antediluvian, the modernist is Whiggish: better-conditioned players, more even playing surfaces, better equipment, warmer temperatures, new revenue streams, and a global market for players’ services have produced the best sport ever played. And things will only get better.

These ideas will be fleshed out further and will, hopefully, form a coherent worldview for this blog.

Van Basten Is (Mostly) Right

Dutch soccer legend Marco van Basten has copped a hiding in the world’s press in recent weeks for tackling one of sport’s great sacred cows: the rules of soccer.

Some of his ideas are admittedly off-target: replacing penalty kicks from the twelve-yard spot with ice hockey-style breakaway penalties is unnecessary and has led to vicious reactions from the most anti-American sections of the world game’s supporter base.

But almost everything else he has proposed is spot on. The details vary depending on what media outlet you read, but here’s a brief rundown:

Four quarters instead of two halves: English fans booed drinks breaks at league games earlier this season, but extra breaks are a no-brainer given player burnout and global warming. Will it take another Marc-Vivien Foé for soccer to get with the program?

Maximum sixty matches per year: the devil is in the details, but player burnout is a serious issue.

No extra time, drawn matches straight to penalties: don’t agree with this one, but the thinking behind it (reducing player burnout and doing away with cagey, scoreless half-hours) is sound.

Six substitutions instead of three: a small step towards unlimited, rolling substitutions which speed up and tactically enrich any sport they are introduced into.

Orange cards (10-15 minute sin-binning for minor second yellows): introduces another layer of punishment for players who are cautioned for a foul and then, say, hand-ball in the centre circle or take their shirt off during a goal celebration.

Abolishing the offside law: van Basten is thinking outside the box, but as I will explain below, he has the right problem but the wrong solution.

Having witnessed the debates around limited/unlimited interchange in both the AFL and NRL in recent years, I have become a convert to the cause of free substitution. Limiting substitutions in any of the invasion sports is a concession to the purists who want slow play and unfit players, and who abhor coaching and sports science. Soccer, like rugby union, sticks to the antiquated model of a single-digit number of one-time-only subs.

Van Basten’s musings about the offside law have caused the most consternation, provoking invective from Arsène Wenger and Jürgen Klopp, among others. The Dutchman made the point that soccer today sometimes resembles European handball, with nine or ten players dropping deep to defend against attacks. Increased fitness and the judicious application of tactics and sports science is the cause of this: the average distance run per match by outfield players has doubled from 5km in the 1970s to 10km today.

Abolishing the offside law in isolation wouldn’t alter this, and indeed the increased space in the midfield would encourage teams to drop more players further back. What is needed is something like lacrosse’s offside law (which limits teams to placing no more than six of their nine outfielders in either half of the field at any time) or the anti-defense rules used in the NHL in the 1920s (which barred teams from having more than two defenders in their defensive third if the puck was in their attacking two-thirds of the rink).

But van Basten was right in his observation that soccer backlines can often resemble handball’s perimeter defences, something which has gone unaddressed by the purists who howl at any proposed change to their beloved offside law except for the changes that have been made in the past.

As These Football Times notes, liberalising the offside law actually makes teams more defensive and enlarges the midfield. The 1925 change from three defenders to two resulted in the shift from the 2-3-5 formation to the W-M (3-2-2-3). The tweaks made in the Era of Blatter took us from the 4-4-2 and the 3-5-2 to the modern 4-2-3-1, with its two specialist defensive midfielders.

In the centre of the pitch, more numbers behind the ball means more uncontested passing: the last changes to the offside law gave us the word tiki-taka and possession percentages. But a bigger midfield can actually diminish the importance of midfield play, as an attacking team has space in which to move the ball unmolested towards a retreating defence. Just like in basketball and handball.

Barring teams from having more than six outfield players in one third of the pitch (which would necessitate the addition of two extra white lines), a rule borrowed from eleven-a-side outdoor European handball, would spread players out more and force teams to work the ball through a crowded midfield.

Or, we could accept that the sport has evolved and that packed penalty areas and lightning counter-attacks are the wave of the future.

AFL Women’s round 1 match review: Carlton v. Collingwood at Carlton

The debut of the AFL’s long-awaited national women’s competition seems as good an opportunity as any to get this blog up and running again.

“The anticipation is building” spaketh DANGERFIELD! as he conducted a pre-recorded pre-match interview with the face of the new league, Magpies ponta-de-lança Moana Hope. This was the culmination of a summer of hype about teh wimminz finally getting their own league and what a great moment in Australian sporting history and and…

And then…yeah.

No-one can pretend that this was high-quality footy. Eight goals and 57 points were scored, a rate of goal-scoring and point-scoring lower than any season of the men’s VFL/AFL. There were fifty stoppages, 41 ball-ups and nine boundary throw-ins, a higher per-minute rate than the 2015 AFL season. And let’s not forget that the women’s match was played sixteen-a-side.

The usual suspects will trot out the usual excuses: these are semi-professional players, they haven’t had access to the same coaching and sports science facilities as the men, they aren’t used to the size 4 Sherrin having used a size 4.5 in their state competitions. That’s all well and good, and the standard of play will improve, but this was not an attractive start to history being made.

The opening passage of play looked more like rugby union than Australian football. It took the players five ball-ups and 95 seconds of regulation time to get the ball out of the centre square, and the first clean possession was shanked out of bounds on the full. Lacking the speed or the strength of male players, it was difficult for anyone to run or kick the ball away from the congestion. Collingwood scored the historic first behind (Steph Chiocchi) and first goal (Jasmine Garner), but only four behinds thereafter, with Hope particularly ineffective at centre half-forward.

The story of the night was Carlton forward Darcy Vescio, who snagged four majors, two in the first quarter and one each in the second and third. She outscored the entire bianconeri team, outshone Hope who finished with one behind to her name, and etched her name and her 5’6” figure into the history books.

There isn’t much more to say about this match. Princes Park was full, with another two thousand locked out: when we ignore the gender of the players, and view them as semi-professionals playing footy on a suburban ground, this isn’t surprising. Melbourne is full of purist-traditionalist footy fans who a) preferred the VFL/AFL when it was played by less fit and less tactically aware players and b) preferred the VFL/AFL when it was played at dingy suburban grounds. Gillon McLachlan has pulled off a masterstroke here.

Carlton 7.4.46 (Vescio 4, Arnell, Davey, Jakobsson) – Collingwood 1.5.11 (Garner)

Ball-ups: Q1: 17, Q2: 8, Q3: 13, Q4: 3; total stoppages: Q1: 19, Q2: 9, Q3, 16, Q4: 6.