nourishing obscurity

The petty tyrant of football and someone else of a similar type.  These are two people for whom the term “up themselves” was coined.

There’d be hardly any reader interested in Australian football here and so I made a vow not to run any of it unless:

1.  My team had a great success;
2.  Something outrageous happened.

This is the latter.  Bet you can hear Cameron in this, Obama,  Blatter or those who run rugby in this country when you read some of these words.

In a nutshell, the game downunder has become commercialized and yes – the players get much more than they ever did but they also have far more playing demands on them, one of those is in the game becoming faster and faster.

The way around it is for an interchange bench of four players who come off and go on through an interchange “gate”.   What it’s done is keep each player fresher, freer from injury and so on – all good.

The players like it, the clubs like it, the fans like it.  What’s not to like?

One man and a group of henchmen have decided otherwise.   The tyrant of football has decided he doesn’t like it.  He wants it to stop and for players to struggle.  He sees it as what fans want.   One of the league’s big men, Darren Jolly of Collingwood, the team with the largest worldwide membership, has taken the petty tyrant, Andrew Demetriou to task:

AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou commenting on everyone’s criticism of the capped interchange rule. He went on to say: ”There will be a cap, that’s already been decided. People can arc up and argue with each other and so forth, but I’m not quite sure what the problem is.”

I’m sorry Andrew, but haven’t you noticed the game is getting quicker and quicker and more demanding on us players and that has happened because you wanted it to?

I first started taking notice of what Andrew said after comments he made about Sydney’s playing style in round 10, 2005, when I was playing for the Swans. His words were that we played ”unattractive” and ”ugly” football and we would not win a premiership playing that way. We won the premiership that year, dropping only two games!

That’s only part of the interference.   Players took to wearing one glove to catch the ball better in the wet.  Demetriou banned it.  He then went on to reduce the interchange bench and wants two substitutes who can only come on and stay on.

It’s almost as if he’s got it in for clubs, players and fans alike.   There’s no sane reason for his moves.

Until you look at the pic at the top and that explains all. We know the type very, very well.

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