In 1986, when I was a 21-year-old football writer on The Sun News-Pictorial (now the Herald-Sun), I got a call in the office one Friday afternoon from Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy.
“I’ve left a videotape for you at reception. Watch it and ring me back,” he said before hanging up. Feeling like I’d just been cast as Woodward or Bernstein in a football version of the Watergate movie “All The President’s Men”, I raced downstairs.
Sheedy had put together a compilation of Essendon players being tackled high and not being awarded free kicks. “We’ve had enough,” he barked when I rang him. “Right now, it’s see an Essendon head and rip it off. We’re going to fight back.”
It was a terrific story for the next morning’s paper ahead of a huge game that afternoon against Collingwood. The results for Sheeds, however, were mixed. Essendon did pretty well that day on the free kick count, where they had plenty more than the Pies. Not so well on the scoreboard, though, where Collingwood won by 26 points.
Sheedy was a master of media spin, deflection and manipulation. So was Mick Malthouse. And today’s breed of coaches are no less averse to and no more subtle in getting the points they want made out there in the public arena.
Alastair Clarkson in 2020 launched into a 10-minute tirade after a Hawthorn-North Melbourne match blaming the dire state of the game on umpires’ failure to pay free kicks for holding-the-ball.
It had immediate impact, too, as the AFL the very next week sent a memo to clubs informing them of stricter interpretations around the rule. And in the following round, the 91 holding-the-ball free kicks paid was more than 50% higher than the previous season average.
So there was a fair bit of déjà vu going on when Carlton coach Michael Voss and Gold Coast’s Damien Hardwick a fortnight ago “did a Clarkson”, the only difference this time that the hook wasn’t the game’s aesthetics but player safety.
“Today, there was a couple of situations for both sides where we have just got to be mindful. It is definitely dangerous,” said Hardwick, after Mac Andrew had spun Charlie Curnow around so many times in a tackle it’s a wonder the Blue didn’t collapse from dizziness. Told of his counterpart’s comments, Voss responded: “There’s an element where the player and the umpire can make that environment a bit safer with everything that’s going on.”
Again, the response was immediate, the AFL going to some lengths to announce significant tightening of the largesse allowed the tackled player in holding-the-ball decisions. And again, the numbers last weekend proved the league’s head honchos weren’t just talking a big game.
In Round 12, an average of 11.6 holding-the-ball free kicks were paid, up on the average 8.2 across the first half of the season, with as many as 17 being paid in the Hawthorn-Adelaide clash, more than double the previous average.
Whilst I tend to agree there needed to be some sort of tightening, I felt those numbers indicated a bit of an over-correction, one which more than likely will settle as players become more familiar with the new standard.
The AFL is doing the right thing, having announced the crackdown, in going to some lengths not only meeting clubs, but in media releases and example video clips, to make sure the entire football world has its head around the revamp.
What worries me, though, is the creeping trend of coaches, however subtly, looking to drive their own agendas via public announcements at press conferences. And even more so, the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the last couple of weeks that it is a psychological tactic which actually works.
Shouldn’t the AFL be a little more reticent to be seen as so readily acquiescing to coaches calls on this issue or that?
Particularly when those running the show, like chief executive Andrew Dillon, general manager of football Laura Kane and umpires’ boss Steve McBurney, are all still relative newcomers to those positions? And particularly in today’s media environment, where (and it pains me to say it) there’s more susceptibility to manipulation?
What Sheedy did with the old Betamax video tape in 1986 was rare. What Clarkson sermonised about four years ago wasn’t unheard of, but still relatively infrequent in the context of a post-match presser.
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But we do seem to have a spate in recent times of coaches making their own statements well beyond answering game-related questions, or “seeking clarification” as the term puts it politely, on either specific incidents or types of free kicks being awarded in games.
And why wouldn’t they if it seems like the AFL will not only take their complaints on board, but instantly act upon them?
In an age where it’s the “talking points” coming out of games which can generate days of media content far more than the actual results and competition ramifications of the games themselves, coaches certainly don’t need much encouragement to push their own barrows.
This is a new AFL administration, still feeling its way. It does seem more interested in getting the game itself right, and that’s terrific. At the same time, however, it must also do everything it can to ensure there’s never any perception that when it comes to how the game is officiated, it’s the tail wagging the dog.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly’s work at FOOTYOLOGY.