AFL Clubs slam NAB Cup interchange cap
Well it was bound to happen wasn’t it, the AFL have decided to trial a new rule and already there has been backlash from the powerhouses clubs of the AFL. I was talking to a couple of friends and my football club last night at our 2nd post christmas pre season session (pretty tough I might add), and we were discussing this exact issue, where the AFL have decided to cap the interchange rotations that each team is able to have and the effect it will have on other areas of the game and players.
What the clubs are saying is very true, this cap makes it very difficult for players that are coming back from injury to have limited game time to ease back into the fold. I was reading an article this morning in the Herald Sun here in Melbourne Australia and a leading sports medico has said that players may try and avoid being detected by the umpire when they are bleeding and injured players may worsen their injuries because they are forced to stay on the ground, I have mentioned on a couple of forums that I thought the fact that players will have less time on the bench to rest that they might then become more fatigued resulting in more soft tissue injuries.
AFL Clubs were told that the interchange rule would not come in and all of a sudden the AFL have made the decision to trial the rule during this years NAB Cup regardless of the clubs objections. Do the AFL take anything else into consideration when they make these decisions? I mean surely they should have consulted the clubs and medical officers about the ramifications of such a rule?
It will mean that the Clubs will just treat the NAB Cup as even more of a joke than they do now. Clubs just will not risk bringing players back during the NAB Cup if they can’t control the amount of game time that they are able to play. In an even more ridiculous situation the Western Bulldogs are due to play the Kangaroos in the humid town of Darwin and requested to be allowed to have extra player swaps during that game but the AFL knocked it back!
If this rule comes in to the regular season then it will mean that the older players and legends of the game will be forced to retire earlier because they are forced to play more time because of the interchange rotation rule. Players like Robert Harvey, as fit as this bloke is, probably wouldn’t be playing this year if the rule had been introduced previously.
I thought the investigation that the AFL is conducting this year on the perceived link between the speed of the game, interchange rotations and impact injuries was going to determine whether they would take this line? They haven’t even started that investigation and the rule is already being trialled. This is just another example of the AFL throwing thier weight around regardless of what the people playing the game think.
More interesting times ahead for the clubs and the AFL.
