Saturday, June 5, 2010

Lies, Damn Lies, AFL commentary

The following article was published on thebigtip.com.au on 13 May 2010

It was about 30 years ago that a visionary dad approached the quarter time huddle at his kid’s country under 15 game. To the slightly bemused crowd he said: “I’ve taken two types of statistics. Kicks… And shit kicks”. He was way ahead of his time.

It’s a tough business recruiting, and it’s only going to get tougher. With two new teams coming, all the talk is of recruiters searching far and wide for decent players. Country leagues. Amateur leagues. New Zealand. China. And of course in other codes. Kevin Sheedy’s comments that code swapping will become common place in the next decade are ill-conceived. His comparison to ordinary people changing industries and jobs over their career is also rather naive. He overlooks the fact that professional footballers are trained in very specific skills, have relatively short careers, and do not generally have a long time to acqure the new skills. Players who have played football for long periods during their childhood have inherent decision making skills that are not easy for a mature age player to attain. As clubs and their coaches emphasise relentless pressure on opposition as the first step to winning games, decision making skills are all-important. Turnovers, the result of such pressure, often result in goals, so ball handling and even more importantly kicking skills, are of extreme importance. To suggest that a rugby player, who has barely spent any of his adult life kicking an Australian football, can pick up these kicking skills to reach AFL standard is something of an insult to those who have spent their lives perfecting (or trying to perfect) the art. Other skills such as judging a high ball in flight and bending at full speed to pick up an oval ball are also very hard to learn, even for an elite athlete.

Paying a rugby player huge money to change to AFL is a similar insult and also quite short-sighted. I challenge the idea that paying this money is worth it in sheer marketing terms. Saturation news coverage may be beneficial at the beginning. But if this player turns out not to reach the standard required to successfully play AFL and moves back to rugby after two years, the supporters of the club will be justifiably annoyed that the cash was not spent on a player with an AFL background. The negative coverage that this will generate could be quite damaging to the club and it’s ‘brand’. If any publicity is good publicity clubs can easily contrive a booze cruise scandal and let the media go on a typical feeding frenzy. If this marketing coup is supposed to attract rugby fans to Aussie Rules, simply imagine if an AFL player switched to rugby. Would real AFL supporters follow a player and begin watching another code? Emphatically no. Finally, the recruitment of a player from another code on an inflated salary may also anger players who feel that the recruit has not yet earnt his large pay packet. This disgruntlement could influence player performance and morale.



Of course, sometimes deciding if a player is good or not is difficult, especially when we are fed a million pointless statistics by commentators. The recent focus of commentators on ‘Dreamteam points’ is a shame and should be removed from the game. For people who don’t play Dreamteam it is an annoying waste of time. For people who listen to the radio for an objective analysis of a game, the intense focus on statistics is frustrating. Commentators all too often forget that radio listeners are blind to the actual happenings on the field, and rely on the vivid descriptions of commentators to nourish their imaginations. Radio commentators are respected (usually), paid experts and should make appraisals of players performances without having to have their decisions confirmed by statistics sheets. That the statistic of ruck hitouts is still regularly mentioned in this day and age is a farce. One only had to watch Mumford and Blake cancel each other out on the weekend to confirm how completely obsolete and useless this statistic, for the most part, is. The near obsession of commentators with the Dreamteam leads one to wonder whether they have been requested by powers above to focus on promoting this (AFL sponsored) competition that so rivets my lesser-minded friends. Perhaps they want to direct more people to the AFL website, so it can freeze the fans’ computers.

The increased use of statistics by commentators is something astute football fans simply have to put up with, for there is no sign of it abating. Those lucky enough to witness games live or on TV can make their own judgment about a player’s performance without the clutter of endless stats. Those who are forced to depend on the radio should start playing Dreamteam. And hope that their computer is strong enough to survive bigpond and the horrible AFL website.

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