Was talking to a rusted on AFL follower yesterday and he agreed that there’s a significant part of the game that’s unstructured and chaotic.
He also said that unlike football, basketball, American football etc. etc. the coach is mostly a non-influence once the game is underway.
It’s not the chaos that annoys me, it’s how shite even the best players are at absolute fundamentals like kicking and catching when compared to other sports. I don’t doubt the athleticism, but it really looks like they’re generally undisciplined in their approach to development and put more store in raw stamina and strength than in technique.
Same thing happened with rugby league 10-15 years ago. Footballers were being replaced with athletes, and the quality went to shit. They seemed to have learnt their lesson though, and reverted back.
100%. They wanted to speed the game up, so it certainly feels like theyve given up some of the skills the sport used to be known for, for quicker transitions and less time between stoppages, marks and free kicks.
Ive been watching AFL since about 1990. I find watching a neutral game of AFL more enjoyable than a game of league, particularly in person. The speed, stamina and athleticism of the players/play is what really appealed to me when I was a kid.
Watching AFL on tv doesn’t compare to watching it live.
I find the skill comparison interesting though and somewhat comparable to boxing vs MMA. The more skills you are allowed to use, the less time you have to dedicate to each individually. Add to that the shape of the ball and intensity of play and it’s really not as simple as some might think
When you can’t catch a ball, that’s like a boxer not being able to throw a jab. There’s extra skill, but there’s not being able to do the absolute fundamentals
I think it truly is the shittest sport ever, but I will admit the close game yesterday down to the final minutes actually made it somewhat bearable.
That said, there’s so much I can’t stand about the game.
The circus-clown team theme songs.
The fumbling.
The constant shoulder charging/pushing (I’m not saying bring back the biff, but when NRL players square off you feel like it might just erupt, but in AFL it’s all just handbags).
The whole Victorian-ness of it all.
The fact that there’s nearly as many umpires on the field as players.
It’s a fundamentally flawed game as you get a free kick whenever you catch a ball that travels greater than 10m and there in no crossbar on the goals. Imagine if the players had the skill of EPL players. It would just be a goal every time a team got the ball from the initial bounce.
I’ve followed and played the sport my whole life and still play in the AFL London league (yes, it actually exists…).
I get the complaints about the fumbles. Can see how for non-fans it could be frustrating but it’s not as easy as it looks. The speed, the pressure and even the leather ball can make basic skills seem harder. Granted I’ve only played amateur, with NSW state carnival being my pinnacle, but is harder than it looks.
Will say though that having played both Aussie rules and football, can 100% say football is the more skillful game.
Again, ball is a weird and the pitch is much bigger.
You can not like the sport/admin/fans whatever… follow your truth… but to say at a professional level it doesn’t have any skill, fundamental or otherwise, is ridiculous.
My understanding is that they also fumble the ball a lot on purpose, because if you grab it then get tackled you get caught in possession. It’s better to fumble it around as it bounces along the floor deciding what to do, it basically buys you a bit of time without risk of a free kick going against you. And also if your opponent jumps the gun and tackles you early when you don’t have possession, you’ll get the free kick. It looks frustrating but a lot of it is by design.
It’s this. Trying to execute skills when you’ve just run 100m is the difficult part.
It’s an inherently pretty difficult game, I think, but so much of the games rules and parameters are based around resetting advantage and re-introducing the 1v1 physical contest.
The throw ups, the first bounce, the 6-6-6, even the shape of the ball.
And some people find that thrilling. They love that “contest” and seeing physical excellence. Different strokes…
The best thing about football is the goal. Every goal in football is different (with the exception of penalties) and beautiful to watch.
Most goals in Aussie Rules are the same, where the player takes a ‘mark’, and then is allowed to have a shot on goal, with a running start with no opposing player allowed to try to stop them. As a fan, how do you know if you’re supposed to celebrate a mark 5 metres out as the goal, or the goal itself when it’s tapped in?
Goals kicked while the ball is contested is better to watch, and I don’t know what the ratio is, but to me the majority are goals kicked from a mark, basically penalty kicks or free throws in basketball.
I saw on the news a week or two ago them bigging up the greatest goal in womens VFL history… some bird just hoofed the ball forward from the middle of the park, it bounced over a pack of about 6 other players who misjudged it, bounced the right way and dribbled another 20m over the line and in.
The player who kicked it celebrated like Tardelli, which was frankly fucking embarrassing given she wasn’t even shooting and the only reason it went in from 60m was due to a combination of sheer luck and incompetence.
For me it wouldn’t matter if, at the professional level, it demands the dexterity of a surgeon, the reflexes of a cat, and the hand-eye coordination of a knife thrower.
I just find it to be a very unattractive looking game.
There’s a reason football is called the beautiful game, and AFL is…not.
There’s a lot of comments in this thread that read just like the ill-informed opinions people have on football because it’s boring, there’s no action and there’s not enough goals.