The days are getting shorter… The days are getting colder… and this means one thing. It must be about time for the football season to start!
The pre-season NAB Cup presented an insight into how teams would shape up this year, but it didn’t provide the full picture. Resting players (or in football jargon “putting players in cotton wool”) is quite common in February, so very rarely would teams play at full strength. Despite this, the NAB Cup is an exciting format, with rule changes, round robins, alternate jumpers, an extended bench and 9 point goals. However, it is just the pre-season tournament, and it has come and gone for another year. A lot of hard work has been done so far to get to this point, and it is the real battle that begins now.
There is immense excitement around the club as we’ve been working towards this for a long time. We had last weekend off, so most of the guys are fresh and injury free, and there are lots of numbers on the training track. Due to this, there is a lot of depth in the players to pick from, which might make team selection hard for the match committee, but it’s a problem I’m sure John Longmire is very pleased to have.
Another issue which will come into play this year right from round 1 is that of the substitute player. The fluro green vested substitute player will be the “road worker” lookalike, sitting on the bench. He can’t come on until another player has been taken off for the remainder of the match. The matter of the substitute player has received just about as much media attention as the last few months as Lindsay Lohan, but without the nudity. (terrible analogy!)
The issues of the substitute player have been two fold; the introduction of the rule, and also how it will affect selection. I’m not going to go into detail about whether it should be brought in or not as I’m a fan of the ‘if it ain’t broke then why fix it’ approach. However, I will be interested to see how teams approach the selection of their substitute. Will teams go for an onballer, a versatile taller player, or a ruckman (for what it’s worth I just realised Adam Goodes ticks all 3 of those boxes but I very much doubt to see him donning the green vest)?
Despite all the off the field issues concerning player managers and opinions on rule changes and everything else, it’s great that football is back in the headlines for the reason it should be. Round 1 starts this week! And let’s start the season off on a high note against Melbourne on Sunday.
Ted Richards
@Richards_Report
