Nathan Buckley has put forward four ideas that he believes can help fix the game.
The Collingwood great has made some suggestions for AFL administrators to take a look at in a bid to make our great game even greater.
Read and listen below:
1 - Selected teams/structures need to change
“It became apparent to me over the last couple of years selecting an All-Australian team that the full-forward line, the half-forward line, the centre line, the half-back line, the backline, the five lines of three, and then the ruck setup…," he said on SEN Breakfast.
“Team structures are not set up like that anymore. But that’s the way clubs are expected to hand them in to the media outlets.
“Centre half-forward and centre half-back are not what they used to be, let alone what a half-forward flank or half-back flank looks like.
“It’s old, it’s archaic, and it’s not absolutely possible to communicate accurately what each club’s slightly different team structure looks like.
“Three twos rather than two threes as a forward line - two tall forwards, two medium-sized forwards and two high forwards what would be far closer to a modern structure than trying to get all positions in.
“When you’re teaching young kids about the game, I don’t think you’re helping them by putting someone in a forward pocket or a back pocket.
“If you can set them up in a more similar manner than what they’ll play in the under-14s or 16s etcetera, I think that would help.
“This is not a big issue as such, but I think it needs to reflect the way that the game is actually played.”
2 - Clean up tackling rules
“There shouldn’t be any prior opportunity.
“We need to simplify for it for the adjudicators, the viewers and the supporters.
“When is the last time we actually heard a crowd yell out “ball” together? We just don’t hear it anymore. Do you know why? Because no one knows whether they’re a chance of getting a free kick for a tackle or not.
“It needs to be opened up. Player who win the ball need to dispose of it by hand or foot legally. Simplify the rule for both the ball-winner and the tackler.
“Remove reasonable time, remove prior opportunity, and remove made an attempt. Take them and replace it with you either did or you did not.”
3 - Reduce list sizes
“I think list sizes have become too big.
“We can reduce the list size to 32 with a train-up squad of 12.
“You need 36 players on the park at training to get your match scrimmage work in. Every club would say that they need that.
“I don’t think we need the massive lists we’ve got at the moment. There’s not enough delineation between elite performance and development. AFL clubs are expected to do both.
“I think we can beef up the pathway. If you have 32 on an AFL list and then make sure every AFL club is aligned with a reserves team in a reserves competition.
“It doesn’t mean that they’re under the same roof, but they’re definitely under the same banner. They have their own development arm like Hawthorn and Box Hill.
“We don’t need 46 people on lists anymore.”
4 - Free up trade - allow trading without consent
“Clubs need to be allowed to trade players without their consent.
“At the moment the players have too much of a whip hand. Clubs are going down these long-term contracts and they’re doing it to prevent their players being poached.
“But it doesn’t stop that when the players choose to leave anyway with multiple years left on their contract. Or a club wants to move a player on with multiple years left.
“Why don’t we say, ‘If you sign a contract with us for a certain period of time, the AFL industry is going to honour that contract’. That doesn’t mean it has to be with us (the club), it might be with another club.
“We need to be at $600,00 and above to be put in this category of being traded without your consent. It doesn’t matter about how many years.
“We’ll see far more player movement, it will control the inflationary impact of long-term contracts, it will make the players more accountable for their professional output year by year.
“There’s a chance to even up the competition quicker than we are doing at the moment.”
Listen to the full explanations below:
