2019 Rule Changes

[Rupert]

I thought it might be useful to have a thread focused on trying to understand the impact that the rule changes might have on SC scoring.

Centre Bounce:
The new 6-6-6 structure is aimed at reducing congestion. Will it? If so, to what extent and who will benefit?

Theoretically, with only 6 players from each team ( the 4 inside the square plus the 2 wings) in position to influence the immediate after-bounce play the ball should be cleared more readily than in the past.

In practice, this might depend on other factors. The size of the ground, for example. Most grounds are 160-165m long and the fwd 50 arcs are sufficiently distant from the bounce inside the centre square that the defs/fwds are unlikely to be able to influence the play. But at the SCG, which is only 149m long, this is not necessarily the case. On the other hand, Adelaide at 190m is so much longer that the players inside the fdw 50s will have no chance of impacting the play. Coaches might have to develop special strategies for playing at these grounds.

Then there is the rule change that rucks taking possession of the ball at ruck contests will not be considered as having prior opportunity. How will this affect centre bounces? Will one strategy be to encourage the ruck to take possession of the ball, accept the tackle and ensure a secondary ball-up? Thus nullifying the intended impact of the 6-6-6 set-up as there are no restrictions on player numbers at the secondary bounce.

Will the type of player used at centre bounces change? I have read that Bolton is tinkering with getting the more speedy players in there. But there still has to be an extractor to shovel it out to the speedsters. Does this mean that the most common mid set-up for mids will be one extractor and 2 speedsters. Or will it be one extractor, one blocker and one speedster?

Withe less congestion, does this mean that there will be less tackling at centre-bounces? If so, to what extent will this affect the scoring of tackle-rich scorers, e.g. Devon Smith, Dayne Zorko, Jack Steele. Does less congestion mean that coaches may be unwilling to use taggers at centre-bounces?

These are just a few of my thoughts.
I will post more on the other rule changes when I can but I hope to incite discussion. It would be useful to know what to look for when the JLT starts.

 

[Lowrider]

On the 6-6-6 - I think the defence will be easy - do a zone with your 6 guys protecting the centre corridor so it's harder to hit a loose target there. If they hit one out to the pocket, then good luck with the kick and we'll quick-rebound up the other end from the behind. If they hit a short target 60m out, we'll have numbers back before you can blink. I actually think scores from centre stoppages will not go up much with this rule as 6 guys is probably enough to clog up the forward line sufficiently and it could even go down. Defend that first disposal, then resume your normal defensive structure. I think this idea of the big FF coming out of the square 1-on-1 to greet the kick from the midfielder is not going to eventuate.

If I was a coach I'd be getting a bit experimental with it. Not so much in the defence or centre square, but in the forward line. Put them all in the goal-square running out in different directions at different times to ensure you get those 1-on-1's. Put them on the boundary running in. Clump them 25m out. Put them 50m out and have some running back towards goal. Have them all in motion before the ball is bounced. This will be the challenge for teams, to actually get that space in the forward line.

In terms of the centre bounce, I don't think anything changes at all. Maybe you want your best users in there to pinpoint those targets, but that's probably the case now anyway. And as soon as the ball is bounced, the players will flock to it like moths to a flame and any perceived lack of congestion will be lost in a matter of seconds.

In a nutshell, I really don't see how 6-6-6 changes the game significantly overall, and definitely not from an SC perspective.

I still like the rule and think it will be visually better (at least for a few seconds), gives some tactical options for the coaches and will make the finish of tight games all the more interesting.

 

[Rupert]

@Lowrider
I appreciate your thoughts and the fact that you have responded.
While you may be right about the 6-6-6 having minimal impact, the fact that so many commentators and some coaches see the changes as significant
impels me to consider that impact.
I've tried to find the Bolton quote where he talks about using speedsters at centre bounces but I couldn't unfortunately. In that article/interview he goes into some detail about why using speedsters is a serious consideration.
Clarkson is another coach who calls the rule changes "significant"in an interview he did on Triple M and talks about the 6-6-6 set-up:
"we've been doing some trialing of that at training and it's just so open at the centre bounce now so centre bounce goals are going to go north. By how much I don't know and is that going to benefit who in the competition - the midfielders, the ruckmen, the forwards - I don't know but ...."
You can access the whole interview here:
https://www.triplem.com.au/story/li...s-his-thoughts-on-the-new-rule-changes-126581

 

[Lowrider]

Maybe it will have more of an impact than I think. I guess they have a responsibility to pump up (or berate) the changes to generate public interest as well.

No doubt the coaches and players have a lot to work on and plan for as it is a big structural change for this part of the game.

Fagan also is keen for speedsters http://www.lions.com.au/news/2019-02-07/fagan-on-new-rules

I guess we'll have to wait until the JLT to see how they attack it and whether there's much difference.

 

[doddy2731]

I too don't think this particular rule change isn't going to make much difference. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this how nearly every game in the history (of at least the modern format) the way teams lined up.
No players able to enter the square until the ball is bounced, having forwards, mids and backs.
And really the only difference is coach's won't be able to have a loose player in defence at the bounce, sorry throw up!
But this can be worked around by having a player on the wing run directly run to the backline not into the centre while the wing position covered by a forward, like in previous years.
The change as @Lowrider has said my make a visual difference in the beginning but overall i can't see thie 6-6-6 rule really changing the overall match apart from the visual aspect at centre bounces.
This speedster thing doesntwmake much sence to me either, teams all ready run with their ball winners and quick ball users in the middle, players will still beb under direct pressure as always. And once the initial bounce has happened once there is a stoppage it reverts back to the old "days". There will be players begind the ball and numbers back.

 

[Rupert]

@doddy2731
I may be misunderstanding you but no, the 6-6-6 isn't how teams have lined up in recent years.
Previously, the centre square was reserved for 4 players from each team but the other 14 could line up wherever the coach wanted them to - he often had some at the edge of the square, poised to charge in as soon as the ball hit the ground. They had to cover only 25m to reach the contest.
Under the new rules, the centre square is still reserved for 4 players from each team but 6 players have to line up inside a team's defensive 50 and 6 inside the forward 50. They may still be poised to charge into the centre but they have much more ground to cover to reach the contest: not just the 25m inside the square but also the distance from the 50m arc to the square. That distance can be minimal, as at Sydney, or quite far, as at Adelaide.

Additionally, having players unable to leave the fwd/defensive 50s before the bounce ensures a certain amount of space in forward lines. Previously, teams have regularly lined up with an extra man, or two, or three, in defense. They can't, now. So if a team does win a clearance it is quite possible that the ball will be coming into their forward-50 within seconds of the bounce. It will be 6 defenders on 6 forwards. Will that lead to more one-on-one contests between forward and defender? Will the 3rd-man-up specialist have enough time to leave his own man and impact the contest? Will teams employ a zone defense?

 

[doddy2731]

Yeah probably a bit hard when writing to try and make sence sometimes. I wasn't saying it's the way teams have always lined up this way but in all the games played in the pst the majority would be in a set up similar with maybe 1 back.
Apart from a direct centre clearance this rule will not make a lick of difference, how many stoppages do we see straight after a bounce? Heaps. So teams will drop staight back after the initial bounce. The only way to stop this is if they play like netball and stay in zone and i hope it doesn't go down this path. If it does i will be done with football completely.

 

[Lowrider]

Small sample size, but just went back to look at the start of the 4 quarters in the GF. Both teams had 2-3 players on each end of the square and at least 1 charged in.
1st - locked in stoppage before anyone got to the centre players
2nd - scrubbed clear out wide and stoppage, none of the players rushing in impacted
3rd - clean possession, quick snap kick and mark to JJK - difficult to tell on the vision, but looked like there was only 2 (at most 3) players from each team inside the 50m.
4th - no clean possession, player did get there to interrupt play but it looked unlikely that anyone was about to get a clean possession anyway.
Checked some of the prelim ones as well and a similar story.

What stood out though was that the wingmen stayed out, none of them charged in. That might change now with the net result being the same.

The 6-6-6 doesn't look like it would have changed the outcome of any of those, and in fact the kick to JJK might not have worked if there were 6 players inside the 50m and he didn't have so much space.

 

[Rupert]

The New Kick-in Rules (NKR)
I've done some sums and I reckon there is likely to be an extra 20-30 SC ppg allocated to the players taking kick-ins.
On average, there was a minimum of 20+ behinds per game last year. In the Sainters games there were 521 behinds over 22 games which works out at 23.68 per game. The lowest totals for behinds that I have calculated so far: Richmond games with a total of 469 behinds; Hawthorn games with a total of 458 behinds. At 458 behinds that is still an average of 20+ per game.
The average play-on rate after behinds was 25% across all teams/players but this varied greatly. L Ryan took 107 kick-ins and played on only once. At the other extreme is Salem who played on 65% of the time. Fremantle players as a whole played on only 8% of the time while Essendon players did so 30+% of the time.
Taking 20 behinds per game as the standard, with 25% of the ensuing kick-ins already scoring points from play-ons, that leaves 15 kick-ins that potentially could score points. If every one was a point scoring play-on then that is a potential 45 extra SC points to be allocated per game. I say "potential" because effective long kicks could score 5 points, short sideways kicks could score 1 point and clangers up to -5 points. If only a third are play-ons then that is still a potential 15 points. I suspect the actual play-on percentage will be somewhere between 50- 66%. It could be higher. In the AFLW they seem to me to play-on around 9/10 times.
So that is an average of 20-30 extra SC points per game to be allocated.

Of course this will vary from team to team and game to game. But it does provoke some interesting questions.

 

[Rupert]

On the 6-6-6 structure:
According to CD, teams lined up in this formation 42% of the time last year.
The teams that used 6-6-6 the most:
Brisbane - 68%; GCS, Coll and WBD - 65%
The teams that used 6-6-6 the least:
Richmond - 3%; Adelaide - 4%

Ref: interview with CD rep. in traders250 podcast.

 

[doddy2731]

The New Kick-in Rules (NKR)
I've done some sums and I reckon there is likely to be an extra 20-30 SC ppg allocated to the players taking kick-ins.
On average, there was a minimum of 20+ behinds per game last year. In the Sainters games there were 521 behinds over 22 games which works out at 23.68 per game. The lowest totals for behinds that I have calculated so far: Richmond games with a total of 469 behinds; Hawthorn games with a total of 458 behinds. At 458 behinds that is still an average of 20+ per game.
The average play-on rate after behinds was 25% across all teams/players but this varied greatly. L Ryan took 107 kick-ins and played on only once. At the other extreme is Salem who played on 65% of the time. Fremantle players as a whole played on only 8% of the time while Essendon players did so 30+% of the time.
Taking 20 behinds per game as the standard, with 25% of the ensuing kick-ins already scoring points from play-ons, that leaves 15 kick-ins that potentially could score points. If every one was a point scoring play-on then that is a potential 45 extra SC points to be allocated per game. I say "potential" because effective long kicks could score 5 points, short sideways kicks could score 1 point and clangers up to -5 points. If only a third are play-ons then that is still a potential 15 points. I suspect the actual play-on percentage will be somewhere between 50- 66%. It could be higher. In the AFLW they seem to me to play-on around 9/10 times.
So that is an average of 20-30 extra SC points per game to be allocated.

Of course this will vary from team to team and game to game. But it does provoke some interesting questions.

Gee it really could make your seaaon if you pick the right backs, could be some great increases in averages.

 

[keffa]

Call me cynical, but I wonder if CD will tweak (lessen) the scoring weight given to playing on as it’s anticipated to increase. All of a sudden it’s just another part of the game, so will they adjust scoring to reflect that?

As always, happy to be wrong. But I’d love someone from CD to come out and knock this conspiracy theory of mine on the head.

 

[Rupert]

Call me cynical, but I wonder if CD will tweak (lessen) the scoring weight given to playing on as it’s anticipated to increase. All of a sudden it’s just another part of the game, so will they adjust scoring to reflect that?

As always, happy to be wrong. But I’d love someone from CD to come out and knock this conspiracy theory of mine on the head.

I'm thinking the same.
The new rules have the potential to boost some defenders SC scores beyond most mids. If they give the same value to long kicks from kick-ins as they do to those same kicks from general play - usually +3 or +5 - then all a defender has to do to increase their SC score by 15 points or more is step outside the goal square and boot it long whenever they take the kick-in.

The Prospectus uses Hurn as an example. After accounting for the times he plays on, he averages 5.2 kick-ins per game. If WC were to decide he should simply kick it long there is the potential for his average to jump from 96.4 to 111.4 or even 121.4.

Or consider Lloyd. Last year he took the most kick-ins in the comp. - 147, 151 or 157 depending upon which AFL article you read - and played on 28/29% of the time. This play on would often be a give-and-get: a short kick-in to the pocket and a return kick to Lloyd in some space. So last year Lloyd had approximately 100 kick-ins where he did not play on, roughly 4.5 per game. But given how short the SCG is, might the Swans not decide that a quick long kick-in is more effective? If so, then Lloyd might conceivably get a scoring boost of anywhere from 13.5-22.5 ppg, lifting his already healthy average to 125.5-134.5.

Given that the SC points per game are locked at 3,300, it seems to me that an inordinate percentage of points might be going to defenders. CD will have no wriggle room for end-of-game scaling. Worse, they may have to undertake negative scaling to bring the total points back within the 3,300.
What impact will that have for the scoring in general?

 

[keffa]

Given that the SC points per game are locked at 3,300, it seems to me that an inordinate percentage of points might be going to defenders. CD will have no wriggle room for end-of-game scaling. Worse, they may have to undertake negative scaling to bring the total points back within the 3,300.
What impact will that have for the scoring in general?

@Rupert we've seen CD tweak scoring before, such as when they decided a couple of season ago (rather arbitrarily I guess) to reduce the weighting given to match winning goals and the like. I reckon there will be a guy in a small room somwhere in a CD bunker wearing an ironic tie, a handlebar moustache and no socks with dress shoes punching some formula into a calculator who will make sure that we don't have a ridiculous spike in defenders scoring. Actually they have a few rule changes to adjust to this season, and I suspect it will be fairly seamless. I guess the PS games will tell the story.

 

[Lowrider]

The great thing about NKR and the JLT is that being a new rule you'd expect teams will be trying out their proper structure. So the guys taking the most will be the ones doing it in the real season, although there may be some who out-perform others and surpass them.

My other thought is that it effectively gives and extra 10-20m to the range of the kick-in. This will means zones will be more stretched and might mean easier targets 30-40m out. And they might only run out of the square to do long kicks. If there's shorter options they may not need to run out. It might also mean there's more space to run - draw the man on the mark and handball rather than kick. Ball-control is critical to a team's success, so I see team's favouring these approaches.

Some groups are spouting ridiculous numbers, but I agree more with your numbers @Rupert . The play-on percentage won't be 100% as some groups are suggesting. They won't all be 3-5 points and a long kick as some are suggesting either. I think 20-30 points per game is a reasonable estimate, and probably consumable within the 3300. You'd expect some other areas to decrease to compensate - e.g. marks from short chips to the pocket will reduce.

I doubt players will get 15 points/game boost, or even 10 points/game. I don't think CD will let them. Probably more like 5 for regular kick-in takers, maybe closer to 10 for some. Especially some of the guys who like to pad their stats.

At this stage, I have Witherden and Sicily in my team and Laird out of it because of this change. Lloyd is also in currently, but I'm faltering. I also have Short, but doubt he makes the final squad.

This is one aspect I'll be watching JLT for. Especially Freo games - Ryan or Wilson might be nice choices if one is clearly preferred over the other with this rule.

 

[Prospector]

Call me cynical, but I wonder if CD will tweak (lessen) the scoring weight given to playing on as it’s anticipated to increase. All of a sudden it’s just another part of the game, so will they adjust scoring to reflect that?

As always, happy to be wrong. But I’d love someone from CD to come out and knock this conspiracy theory of mine on the head.

Given the 3300 points cap, any additional points will have to be weighted down - it's more a question of how much ...

 

[J-Dog]

It’ll be interesting to see if any players just blatantly pad their stats. If it was me I reckon I’d step out of the square even for 15m chips just to bump up my numbers

 

[Rupert]

The Hands in the back and Ruck rules
As far as I can tell the changes to these rules are simply a reversion to the more traditional rules from a few years ago.
hands in the back: a player will still be penalized if he pushes an opponent in the back but not for touching him or holding him off
ruck rule: a ruckman can now, again, grab the ball out of the ruck without "prior opportunity" being mandated

Does anyone understand them differently?

 

[Lowrider]

The Hands in the back and Ruck rules
As far as I can tell the changes to these rules are simply a reversion to the more traditional rules from a few years ago.
hands in the back: a player will still be penalized if he pushes an opponent in the back but not for touching him or holding him off
ruck rule: a ruckman can now, again, grab the ball out of the ruck without "prior opportunity" being mandated

Does anyone understand them differently?

The hands in the back is one of the most interesting and forgotten rule changes. I do think we'll see a lot more contested marks as a result. So I can see this boosting key position players, especially forwards. How much for a contested mark, kick and goal? And do that once a game, even every 2 weeks. Might add a good 5-10 points to a key forwards average. Especially big hulking guys. Expect some adjustment by umpires and players though, including the old dive forward like you just got hit by a bus as soon as you're touched.

Ruck rule, I'm not convinced we'll see this much despite this. Might mean guys like Grigg can no longer be backup. Not sure it means anything for ruck scores though ???

 

[Rupert]

Brad Scott on the rule changes:
http://www.afl.com.au/news/2019-02-19/new-rules-will-mean-more-hammerings-says-scott

"Most coaches believe the requirement that defenders and forwards start inside their 50m arcs – and can no longer station themselves on the edge of the centre square – will give players at centre bounces an extra two to three seconds to clear the ball.
This in turn, the coaches reason, will lead to quicker, cleaner inside 50m entries and give forwards more one-on-one marking opportunities.

Teams are also expected to find it harder to lock the ball inside their forward halves due to the kick-in changes.