TOPIC:

Having played senior football in the country back in the mid fifties I find the game hard to follow with a lot of bullshit rule changes.
Some have improved the game whilst others have killed it.
Take the hundreds of diving on the ball whilst the umpires circles the situation numerous times only to get a ball up. We were penalized for this stupid act.
Take the idiot who is covered & calls for the ball only to be pounced upon & NOT penalized as he had not prior opportunity to get rid of it.
Take the player who feints a play on to get a free. We had a play on from the umpire, not just a suck in the opposition.
But why not believe the goal umpire instead of wasting 5 minutes only to use thousand of dollars worth of useless info.
The rule was get rid of the ball by a kick or handball but now it is play on when usually dropped under the rule of knocked free.
Defenders get the rough end of the stick. Its the pretty boys who get the advantage..
I say stuff the AFL.
Please add what I've missed

Deliberate out of bounds. The rule states a player is not allowed to deliberately kick the ball OVER the boundary line. Blokes now get penalised for kicking the ball TOWARDS the boundary line to gain metres and get the ball away from the dangerous corridor which used to be considered textbook defensive football when under pressure.

it is a game that has been redesigned for television viewing and marketing - not many remaining resemblances to the game we grew up with
it's a putrid combination of a few sports now and it's removed several positions on the ground particularly the key forward posts and one on one contests

I'm not going to put up with another season of over the top coverage of one competition. I dont want to put up with the latest unjury updates on Nic Nat's knee, Fyfe's shoulder,or any other player for that matter.
I'm over hearing complaints abot how hard the surface is at Optus Stadium. You think thats bad, go back to the AFL suburban grounds like Princes Park or Moorabin after some rain.
I'm also over the AFL dominating so much coverage, the WAFL gets next to nothing. It's bad enough The West Australian has deliberately reduced the number of pages it prints each day, and expects you to pay to read stories not in the paper on thier website. You can stick your paper and stick your website. If it wasnt for the Announcements, I would have no need to go to the website at all.
Finally, I'm having a year away from the AFL. I wont watch or listen to any game, read a story about it and will ignore posts on Facebook about it. Despite their claims about how great the game is going , the AFL is ruining local football. Not just the WAFL, VFL or SANFL, but local suburban and country as well. How many clubs fold or have to merge each year due to the money sucking monster that is the AFL?
I never thought I would reach this stage. Ive followed football since I was 10. After 40 years of seeing how it is being run, I'm almost done and dusted with it, If it wasnt for my WAFL and Amateur team I woudl have no interest at all.
One more thing. Port Adelaide started in 1996 and fielded their first team in 1997, not 1870. The SANFL team should be celebrating that milestone. Not that they have a lot to celebrate now. A once proud club reduced to being the reserves side for an AFL team.

swansfan4life wrote: I'm not going to put up with another season of over the top coverage of one competition. I dont want to put up with the latest unjury updates on Nic Nat's knee, Fyfe's shoulder,or any other player for that matter.
I'm over hearing complaints abot how hard the surface is at Optus Stadium. You think thats bad, go back to the AFL suburban grounds like Princes Park or Moorabin after some rain.
I'm also over the AFL dominating so much coverage, the WAFL gets next to nothing. It's bad enough The West Australian has deliberately reduced the number of pages it prints each day, and expects you to pay to read stories not in the paper on thier website. You can stick your paper and stick your website. If it wasnt for the Announcements, I would have no need to go to the website at all.
Finally, I'm having a year away from the AFL. I wont watch or listen to any game, read a story about it and will ignore posts on Facebook about it. Despite their claims about how great the game is going , the AFL is ruining local football. Not just the WAFL, VFL or SANFL, but local suburban and country as well. How many clubs fold or have to merge each year due to the money sucking monster that is the AFL?
I never thought I would reach this stage. Ive followed football since I was 10. After 40 years of seeing how it is being run, I'm almost done and dusted with it, If it wasnt for my WAFL and Amateur team I woudl have no interest at all.
One more thing. Port Adelaide started in 1996 and fielded their first team in 1997, not 1870. The SANFL team should be celebrating that milestone. Not that they have a lot to celebrate now. A once proud club reduced to being the reserves side for an AFL team.

+1 mate.
The only interest I have in that Vic comp is in how the Swans boys are going.
The over the top media drivel coverage just turns me off that comp even more, most of the dingbats that cover that League think they are just as big a 'stars' as the players.
The comp runs from late Feb to early Oct anything outside that time frame is cricket season, basketball, soccer, golf, racing etc but these clowns lead by their leader Dill make mountain out of molehill stories just to try and stay relevant and in the news as they cant bear to face the fact that it is not their time in the sun.
The fire disasters on the East Coast just another case in point where they could have done something relevant and brought back a proper State Of Origin battle weekend to raise money but instead just made it all about Victoria and thrown in an All Stars opponent to take them on and then have the gall to call it State Of Origin and its back FFS what an insult to the WA bloke that invented the concept and that the nrl has taken on and run with with great success whilst Dill and his predecessors dropped the ball big time!
Who really gives a flying fig whether some bloke has run his best 3km time trial or bench pressed 150kgs or rolled an ankle and will miss 4 weeks of pre season in January very Summer.....whoopty fricken dooo....actually they are full time athletes on big money they should be beating their personal bests every bloody year if they are the so called 'professional' or 'elite athletes' as these muppets constantly drum down everyones throat?!
The fact the WAFL gets so little media coverage in comparison to that Vic comp actually makes me more intrigued and excited by the start of our WAFL season rather than that over the top covered Vic lot!

the code is rubbish, it is over coached and has players whom have less skill than those of the past. The media coverage, is borderrring on totalitarian, everyone having to support the same team as channel seven and the paper. neither of which, have i botherred with for thirty five years.

the afl will never bring back state of origin for the simple reason that they would have to accept that its competition is not the pinnacle of the sport; they will never raise the draft age for the same reason. franklin would have been a star in his own right had he played 110 games for perth in a strong WAFL. Which brings me to the real question about most football followers in ths state: why are they preparred to watch a weak WAFL and have no state of origin? Why are they preparred to watch an inferior version of the code, one which has been increasingly wrecked, even in Victoria, by over coaching and the, effectively, de-skilling of footballers?