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The game of Australian Rules football has changed constantly over its 160-odd-year history. Laws have been tweaked and tactics have evolved.
Key points:
- The AFL has secured a line of credit with two major banks to allow the league to keep operating during the coronavirus pandemic
- However the league and clubs have stood down significant numbers of staff until May 31 to save costs, with those remaining on reduced hours
- The AFL says the competition will resume with 18 teams as before, but budgets are expected to be much smaller
Even the shape of the field and ball are different to what they once were.
The sport now appears headed into another period of upheaval — one brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and the financial havoc it has wrought.
Thoughts are turning to what the football world will look like on and off the field with a drastically reduced budget thanks to the slashing of income through TV money, gate takings and other commercial opportunities.
"It is no doubt going to be a very different landscape," St Kilda's head of football program David Rath said.
"We're still waiting to hear from the AFL what those constraints are.
"But even then, I think what we'll find is going to be a new world."
If one thing is certain, it is that clubs will be forced to cut their off-field football spending.
It is an area that had become bloated, according to some critics, with a myriad of assistants, development coaches, sports scientists, welfare managers and analysts added to clubs' payrolls in the past two decades.
To curtail that arms race, the AFL introduced what was known as a soft cap on football department spending, which was set at $9.7 million before the coronavirus shutdown.
Clubs could still spend more, but were taxed for every dollar spent over the limit.
That cap will be reduced — and perhaps hardened — as the league adapts to its new financial circumstances.
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"All clubs will have to be much more frugal in how they're spending money," Rath said.
"I don't think anyone will be in a position to be splashing out to gain a massive advantage."
Four-time premiership coach David Parkin believes a cut in non-playing football staff may prove to be a fillip to a game he feels has had some of the joy sucked out of it.
He cites a conversation he had with Brownlow medallist Sam Mitchell and other Hawthorn midfielders, who described to him the amount of coaching they received at Hawthorn.
"They were averaging 92 stoppages per game, and every one of those stoppages somebody had pre-determined what their starting position was and what their role was from that starting position," Parkin said.
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"And they were outwardly and honestly talking about how much their sheer enjoyment, the fun of playing had been reduced for them."
Parkin hopes having fewer coaches will allow footballers to play with more creativity and spontaneity.
"I think initially we might get a better game for all participants — easier to umpire, better to watch and more fun to play," he said.
But Rath, who was one of those coaching Mitchell at the Hawks, does not subscribe to that theory.
"I don't think it's as simple as more coaches mean more structure," Rath said.
"If you look at how the game's been played over the last couple of years, it's had an element of chaos that hasn't come about because there's been fewer coaches.
"There's been more coaches than five or six years ago when it was incredibly structured."
Style issues aside, there is a human face to the changes sweeping the AFL. Real people are losing real jobs.
One of them is Nathan Burke.
Overnight, his full-time position as the Western Bulldogs' AFLW coach was cut to seven hours per week.
"They're [AFL clubs] probably going to have to look at their whole business model of how much do they put into their next-generation academies, their school programs and their community programs," Burke said.
"And they need to decide — what's our core business? Do we cut out an assistant coach or do we cut somebody from the marketing department?".
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But befitting someone who has been a pioneer of analytics and strategy in football, Rath believes the clubs and coaches who adapt fastest to the new environment will be the ones to succeed.
"It's probably the clubs that innovate quickest that get the biggest advantage in that space," Rath said.
"Some of what we're doing in six months' time will be different to what we're going to be doing in 18 months' time. Footy has this amazing ability to adapt."
It will have to. The golden days of clubs spending every cent that comes in and often more are gone.
Footy will eventually be back, but it will not be the same.
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Topics: infectious-diseases-other, respiratory-diseases, covid-19, sport, australian-football-league, australia
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