Football laws improve the game
Problem for ruck men
In spite of some grumbling by players and umpires, I firmly believe that the new laws introduced by the Australian National Football Council have infinite possibilities, and that the game will still remain the greatest ball game on earth.
Australian football, like successful businesses, thrives on progress and change. Each year brings new faces; new methods and more often than not new laws, and it is with the laws that I am mainly concerned
This year there are two: the throw ‘in’ and ‘no drop’ and they have been made possible because this is a democratic country and it is obligatory on those who govern to interpret the will of the people. In the history of the game football legislators have always followed these principles-sometimes slowly but always eventually.
Those who are keenly interested know that every season brings its controversies over some rule or other. Last year the usual arguments received an impetus through the Association’s introduction of ‘throw ball’ and developed into an outcry in which nearly every rule came under fire.
Should anyone not perfectly understand them the ‘throw in’ means that every time the ball goes over the boundary line it is thrown into play by the boundary umpire except if it is willfully kicked out when a free kick is given. Before it was nearly always a free kick
The alteration is an endeavour to eliminate the man who made no attempt to stop the ball from going out but simply waited for an unearned kick. The alteration will also bring the action of the game from the centre of the field to near the boundary line and will give the spectators many close ups of their champions in play.
Kick or punch
The ‘no drop’ occurs at the tackle and if a player in possession is firmly held he can only kick or punch the ball away when formerly he was also allowed to drop it. The idea in this law is to stop the agitation and confusion caused to spectators players and also umpires on the question whether it was ‘hold the ball’ or ‘hold the man’, and when it was dropped too many scrimmages happened.
Whether or not these two changes will achieve a blissful agreement between spectators and the umpire and players remains to be seen.
This ‘no drop’ law is not nearly so queer as it appears at first sight. One must remember that where the old rule said that a player in possession must act immediately he was held, now he is to be ‘firmly’ held. The League has amplified the ‘firmly’ a little to instruct the umpires to give the man with the ball a reasonable chance of kicking or hand-balling now that he is not allowed to drop.
Courage-virility
To me the rule conjures up a picture of courage and virility. The bigger men in appreciation of more latitude will not worry about kicking or hand-balling any more. Instead, it will be a charge straight through the opposition. The ball will go under one arm, out will go the other arm as a fend, and woe to the man in their path!
Tiggy - that objectionable practice of reaching out the hands to stop a man - will disappear altogether and the tacklers bereft of this method of attack will have to meet the player in possession shoulder to shoulder or else crash into him unless he is very fast and clever with a real hold.
It will be a man's game with no simple expedient of throwing the ball away to aid the quitter in a tight corner.
Of course the game may become too hard, but that will be preferable to it being too soft, and, in any case, in this country, where freedom of speech is allowed, we can always make a fuss to bring about yet another change.
Small man's troubles
I have not forgotten the smaller man's troubles. He, of course, will be out of the picture in a crush as a tackler, but, with the ball, his better balance and quicker feet will surely teach him to kick quicker, or to be brighter with his hand-ball.
To show what can be done, I cannot but think of Ross, of Collingwood. He can gather the ball in and kick it almost in the one movement. He is a back man, and a defender must despatch the ball away. Ross, small, and sometimes caught in a crush, has rarely failed to kick away without recourse to dropping. If Ross can do this why is it impossible for others to learn the art of quick kicking? I will admit that the forwards are going to be in some trouble in turning around if they play, as they do now, all crowded together. If the forwards, for a change, decided to keep the attacking play open, most of their worries would disappear, and we as spectators would enjoy a more open and systematic game, instead of the present milling struggles in front of goal.
The throw-in law also opens up vistas of a different game. Of late years the ruck man has not been a follower of the ball at all. He has simply cruised up and down the centre of the ground, with the main object of making himself a loose man. He has also backed his anticipation to be where the ball is kicked, without bothering about boundary play, in the hope of beginning a burst of system for the team.
At other periods we have found him overcrowding the forward lines; but in between times his brilliant individual mid-field play makes us forget his deliquencies as a follower. The ruck man's job has been easy; but from now on it will be different. He will have to be there for every throw-in because a clean hit-out by him to his alert and waiting rover will make dozens of winning openings for his side.
It is a rub that many teams are going to feel. Think of Dyer, of Richmond, a great player, but an individualist. Is Richmond to order Dyer to be a real follower and chase the ball along the boundary for that ‘hit out’, and by so doing lose, as he surely will, that strength and dash and great play midfield which has so often carried Richmond on to victory or staved off a certain defeat? Or does Dyer carry on, as he has been doing, to forgo the advantage of the ‘hit out’?
There is also the question of tactics. It has often been the practice of wide-awake captains continually to throw fresh and smaller men into the ruck to make play faster and to keep the pressure on. That idea will now be relegated to the past. The rucks now must be big, powerful, more ambling, and better conditioned than fast, to have any more ruck men will mean an unbalanced side.
The future of League football is all very interesting, and the personnel and the tactics of a team must undergo a radical change. In fact, although it is early yet for sweeping statements, the club which realises and plans on the advantages and disadvantages of these new laws will gain early victories that possibly will make the difference between being in or out of the final four.
Footnotes
Title: Football laws improve game Publisher: The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1956) Author: Ivor Warne-Smith Date: Saturday, 5 April 1939, p 21 (Article) Web: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12115528
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