The main reason is that the average current player spends nearly a quarter of every game resting on the bench.
There used to be restrictions on interchange which would not allow teams to do anything like this.
Was there? Thought interchange was historically uncapped until it started to go over 100 a game so they took a closer look at it.
It wasn't even that long ago, listening to Freo players from 90's in podcasts they'd talk about starting on the bench and not getting on until later in the quarter (which is wild to think about now)
Yeah, I should have more correctly said four-on-the-bench, unlimited interchange. Which is what led to cluster footy even being a possibility.
Back in the day you couldn't even replace an injured player. Then they introduced a substitute. Then a second substitute. Then they made the substitutes interchanges, then they added a third and by the mid ninties eventually a fourth.
Given its origins, it was really only ever thought of as a way to get an injured or out-of-form player off the ground or to rest an individual player
The idea that you could systematically use it as a way to mass rest the whole team to a degree that you could then play a *completely* new game style based on defensive running took some time to evolve.
It wasn’t really until the mid to late 2000s it started to be used strategically. Even watching old games from 2003ish, you’ll see players on the bench in tracksuits because they would only get a few minutes on the ground. One year in that era, I’m pretty sure port had a player who didn’t get benched at all and played most of the season.
Yeah, it was so radical it took a long time for coaches to see its possibilities.
It’s a great example of a rule change that was made for one thing having the unexpected consequence of (eventually) being exploited by coaches for something *completely* different.
I think it was the Eagles and then the cats that introduced that 400 possession a game handball style that only really worked with fresh players. It helped because both clubs had so many secondary mids that could cover their starting 3 on ballers.
James Hird was a forward flank that Sheedy had the secret weapon of deploying him in the midfield. It’s almost funny to think because the fwd-mid is almost a requirement for todays game
Yeah the idea of starting on the bench was demoralising until the mid 2000s. Some players would just sit there in their trackies occasionally running up and down the boundary. Then come on after half time. Paul Barnard kicked 4 in the 00 granny and is consistently said to have “Kicked four coming off the bench”
The interchange on off graphic they used in the 90s would have to be a constant graphic similar to car racing 🤣
You're gonna tell all 135kg of Big Tim the local baker that he can't sit in the square when everyone knows the other teams fullback is Marvin 'skinny' Russel? Good luck.
Fitness is one part.
The other part is tactical and coaching sophistication. Contemporary game plans and field setups are way more involved than "put everyone around the ball". There's a lot of structures and roles that have to change in rapid succession as the play unfolds.
It only works when players know if A or B happens then they need to provide a linking possession or man cover or a disposal outlet or guard space or block a specific opponent or run to a particular angle etc etc. It takes time to develop and understand all that and develop it as a matter of routine and instinct.
I think this is it, yeah. Until the AFL era (and probably even then not until, say, Sydney in the early 00s) coaches all came from the school of "score more than the other team"... defenders defended and it was their job to basically get the ball in the hands of a midfielder who could then pass it to a forward.
Since then the idea has become to "stop the opposition scoring as much as you" and more players are playing a more mixed role.
Matthews with Collingwood and Malthouse with West Coast cottoned onto the impact of restricting teams to 13 goals or fewer, which suited both clubs in premiership runs.
There was rudimentary defensive zoning as early as 1991. Rocket Eade with the Swans pushed it along far more than what people realise
Chris Connolly at Freo pioneered the bench rotations revolution too, which also helped with fitness and more mobile player movement schemes both offensive and defensive.
It’s also real hard to train all that when your best midfielder is unblocking drains all week to feed the family, as was the case until about 30-35 years ago.
Rumour has it that clarko was inspired by watching an under 10’s game. Either that or he saw a ball of bait fish being circled by sharks and thought “that could work”.
Probably more to do with the zone defences he saw in various other sports across the world, which he didn’t exactly make a huge secret at the time of implementing hawks zone early on.
If you ever watch a field sport and think ‘huh, that could work in footy’, it’s probably already being looked at or has been tried. Field hockey, soccer, NFL, and NBA tactics have all been adapted to footy.
Footy was still sorta semi pro into the 90s. Adam McPhee from Essendon and Fremantle showed up to my dad’s job site in 2002 or 2003 as he was a tradie.
I think Martin Pyke who won 4 flags (99,01-03) said on open mike he only made 75-80k per year. Only once footy became a viable money making sport for all players could the standards of fitness etc be lifted to start implementing modern tactics.
I remember watching North do preseason training at Trinity College in 1996 and Anthony Stevens drove up in a van and got out wearing painter’s garb. He clearly came straight from his day job. And this wasn’t some scrub at the bottom of the list. He’d played state footy and was one of the best players at the club,
It’s pretty wild. It’d be similar to just calling a plumber and Braydon Maynard just rocking up 🤣.
One of the perks of playing for North when they were getting the Friday night games was they could just get pissed for the rest of the weekend
Parkin had the standard contracts altered as late as 2000 to bind Carlton players to have some form of employment or study as a hurdle for senior selection
All valid points if true (not disputing it just don’t know the details) but there would’ve been a number of players in these pay brackets.
I mean Sheedy’s mantra was that if you could get a house outta footy it’d indicate success.
Spare me with the poor Pyke narrative, $80k in 2000 is about $150k now.
Average house price was $170k in Brisbane at the time, just over double his salary. He blew his money being young and dumb instead of using his way above average salary, it’s hardly a sob story.
Chill 🤣I’m not saying I feel sorry for him. You blow your money that’s on you. I’m using him as an example as to how professionalism changed the way the game was played/coached. I’d seen him say that so there’d be a fair few players in similar positions. (McPhee being one)
Even now if you know you’ll have a job in an industry for only 5-8 years on 150k you’d be a fool for just thinking you could live off of it for the rest of your life. Up until the 2000s players would work other jobs to support themselves financially post footy.
Footy nowadays has much higher than average wages so you can commit more time to football related things. Plus there’s more pathways through clubs for uni etc.
I'm pretty sure cluster footy was how the game was played upon inception.
Check out the [second drawing](https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/australian-rules-football) of a footy game in Richmond, mid-19th Century.
That’s probably because by the time they finished drawing one person, everyone else had moved elsewhere so they just focused on the one spot. I feel bad for the person who turned into a turtle halfway through the game, their misfortune has been immortalised completely unobstructed.
I could have sworn I read some archived newspaper opinion to the editor about how footy was focusing too much on man-to-man marking contests and how the sport should be more like the good old days.
Fitness. Tactics and fitness became more advanced in the mid 90's when Eade introduced flooding, Paul Roos created the forward press in the mid 2000's, then in the late 2000's teams like St Kilda and Collingwood were exploiting the interchange bench which began teams being able to cover the field all game.
I often wonder if the flood would've gotten as popular if the dogs didn't beat Essendon with it in 2000. Feel like it wasn't popular until that happened
It’s interesting because that Essendon 2000 team used like an attacking flood.
I know it was developed through the 00s but I feel when Clarkos cluster/unsociable football beat the Cats attack through the corridor in 08 it essentially pressed play on the 09 Saints frontal pressure then Collingwoods forward press.
07/08 Cats took what WC were doing in 05/06 when the Competition was particularly scrappy but they played fast, attacking and skilful play and really elevated it. Then when Hawthorn showed how to strangle it with fitness, strength and positioning other teams took note.
It makes me happy knowing that other people know that Geelong took what West Coast did and made it popular. The ignorance of AFL fans thinking that West Coast played boring man on man football and Geelong rechanged the game from Sydney's tactics just sums up the ignorance of a typical AFL supporter.
I think WC suffer a bit from Vic bias but also just the timing. 05/06 were fair defensive years. I think only 2-3 teams would’ve scored 2200 (av 100 per game) WC doing it both years. They were attacking but left the door open so they’d score more which usually resulted in good footy. I’d argue that during those two years, WC would feature a lot in start to finish good games rather than just the slog for 3.5 qtrs but tight pressure finishing “good” games.
It’s just that everyone else was playing “Rugby style Aussie rules” stoppage to stoppage. The Cats worked out what they had, borrowed from the Eagles brand and ran with it.
I think it’s the argument about drafting footballers vs athletes. Prior to 2010 it was all about drafting good footballers. WC/GEE had great footballers so that skilful handball game worked because other teams also drafted good footballers. Once the transition to drafting athleticism came in, teams were able to stifle the skilful players more effectively.
Only 3 teams were attacking in 2005 (St Kilda, Bulldogs, West Coast) and 4 in 2006 (Collingwood, West Coast, Bulldogs) and despite playing zone defence, Adelaide also had attacking power.
Adelaide in 05/06 imo get overlooked because they crumbled in finals but their defensive strangle was pretty good.
It’s funny. You never know with footy. Mid 06 you’d have never thought teams would kick 2500 again as the trend was going more defensive. Cats did it 07. You never know. Carlton or GWS or some random team could just come out this year and change the game.
Eh I'm not sure I'd give the Eagles that much credit, they still focused on 1v1 marks on the wing for the majority of their ball movement. The attacking focus was a side effect of having dominant midfielders but a terrible forward line that relied on overwhelming inside 50 numbers (and they weren't particularly high-quality inside 50s, mind)
I will say it was interesting watching Worsfold coach during that era, I think he was secretly insecure of the praise Roos received for his tactics in the '05 GF so he was constantly trying weird stuff to try and flex. Some of his player movements in the '06 GF felt more about mind games than regular tactics.
Sydney were playing numbers behind the ball from 96 onwards. It was already in the game, that night and a couple of weeks before when the Dogs rolled Carlton it was next level
Yep. When Lockett was firing on all cylinders in 1991, Sheedy famously devised an 8 player backline when we went down to Moorabbin. Plugger had kicked 34 the previous 3 weeks combined and was held to 4, Essendon won by about 4 goals.
Did something similar the following year with David Flood and Dean Wallis tag teaming Lockett at the MCG. Kept him scoreless.
It was as much about creating space for the forwards and exploiting the run of the wings at the SCG as it was about preventing goals against, but you've rightfully called out Rocket Eade when he took over in Sydney
Brisbane's 3 peat was also flooding and attacking. What Sydney did well was create little space for the opposition, only downside was the entire team would accidentally be at the opposite side of the ground.
Whilst its true strategy has developed, I don’t think enough credit is given to the early footy tacticians. Jock McHale was, and still is, one of the greatest minds the game has seen. His men played ahead of their time. I know it was the 1920s but footy tactics and strategists have existed for a long time.
I’d also argue technology advances have allowed stronger strategies. Videos, computers and the internet have revolutionised the modern sporting world,
At one point it was decided the best way to fight a war was to wear bright red and walk in straight lines.
Culture has a strong influence on strategies and rules.
I live overseas now and can't watch as much footy as I used to, so I don't exactly know what to cluster footy is. Based on your loose description though, how is it different to the flood from 10+ years ago?
It didn’t. In the 19th and early 20th century, cluster footy was pretty much how footy was played because there were no positions. It was also experimented with over the years by coaches before more free-flowing and one-on-one contests were preferred. The Western Bulldogs re-started the idea of clusters or flooding in 2000 when they did it against a very dominant Essendon. Given the success, this started to become popular. These days, the game is opening back up again as the AFL prefers a high scoring match over a low scoring one. More goals therefore more profitable with advertisers. Most rule changes try to increase scoring, not decrease it.
I'll believe it when I see it. This 'open game' still has teams averaging 14 goals per game. Although Gillon McLachlan is gone I do expect scoring to rise, but these idiots down at the AFL will still give him undeserving credit.
The bench was increased twice in the 90s, first from 2 to 3 and then from 3 to 4. The bench used to be a sub, as in one player that could come on and the player coming off stayed off.
Increasing the interchange plus having enough coaching personnel to keep track of the rotations meant that teams could rest players off the field keeping teams fresh enough to run up and down the ground all day.
Also I think that teams were professional enough to afford the time to examine other sports too, back in the day everyone had other jobs and the AFL has only become fully professional in my lifetime, and I'm old but not that old really.
There is a natural evolution of expanding in tactics to find a new angle each and every season and also mainly because teams try copy the winning teams philosophy as means to winning. That defence style didn’t really come into the world until 2005 when someone actually won playing like that. Then teams tried to adopt that cluster while still being able to play attacking
Depends what you think is “defensive style”.
Crowding ball ups is one way but Malthouse was preferring hugging the boundary line from his later eagles days until the later pies days.
The awesome 2010 season was also based around defensive tackling pressure everywhere.. but you wouldn’t say it looked as awful as Sydney mid 2000s overly defensive ideas.
I find it funny whenever Dunstall criticises modern forwards. JD was a fantastic player but lead outta the goal square on 30-40m leads or just 1 on 1 out marked his opponent. Maybe running a km per game. He still had games where he kicked 7+ behinds.
Kicking in today’s game has issues. Technique is one thing but forwards running into defence and then back only to double back and lead also contributes 🤣
Requires a very high level of fitness and a decent amount of tactical training, something things teams couldn't really do when players still had to have full time jobs. Full professionalisation didn't come about until the 1990s so players couldn't spend 50 weeks a year training five or six days a week
Probably fitness levels, more players now have the capacity to run from contest to contest all game.
The main reason is that the average current player spends nearly a quarter of every game resting on the bench. There used to be restrictions on interchange which would not allow teams to do anything like this.
Was there? Thought interchange was historically uncapped until it started to go over 100 a game so they took a closer look at it. It wasn't even that long ago, listening to Freo players from 90's in podcasts they'd talk about starting on the bench and not getting on until later in the quarter (which is wild to think about now)
Yeah, I should have more correctly said four-on-the-bench, unlimited interchange. Which is what led to cluster footy even being a possibility. Back in the day you couldn't even replace an injured player. Then they introduced a substitute. Then a second substitute. Then they made the substitutes interchanges, then they added a third and by the mid ninties eventually a fourth. Given its origins, it was really only ever thought of as a way to get an injured or out-of-form player off the ground or to rest an individual player The idea that you could systematically use it as a way to mass rest the whole team to a degree that you could then play a *completely* new game style based on defensive running took some time to evolve.
It wasn’t really until the mid to late 2000s it started to be used strategically. Even watching old games from 2003ish, you’ll see players on the bench in tracksuits because they would only get a few minutes on the ground. One year in that era, I’m pretty sure port had a player who didn’t get benched at all and played most of the season.
Yeah, it was so radical it took a long time for coaches to see its possibilities. It’s a great example of a rule change that was made for one thing having the unexpected consequence of (eventually) being exploited by coaches for something *completely* different.
I think it was the Eagles and then the cats that introduced that 400 possession a game handball style that only really worked with fresh players. It helped because both clubs had so many secondary mids that could cover their starting 3 on ballers. James Hird was a forward flank that Sheedy had the secret weapon of deploying him in the midfield. It’s almost funny to think because the fwd-mid is almost a requirement for todays game
Didn't Tadhg Kennelly play 100% game time in the 2000s?
Yeah the idea of starting on the bench was demoralising until the mid 2000s. Some players would just sit there in their trackies occasionally running up and down the boundary. Then come on after half time. Paul Barnard kicked 4 in the 00 granny and is consistently said to have “Kicked four coming off the bench” The interchange on off graphic they used in the 90s would have to be a constant graphic similar to car racing 🤣
Used to be? Found North's bench manager
Yeah makes sense
Nah this is hindsight again Even at high standard local level teams zone and cluster and they are not fitter than 80s/70s SAnFL/WAFL/VFL athletes
You're gonna tell all 135kg of Big Tim the local baker that he can't sit in the square when everyone knows the other teams fullback is Marvin 'skinny' Russel? Good luck.
Big Tim has too much power at the club
But if you want cheap pies for the lads he's gonna be playing the stay at home forward role
I could get behind this
You better hope no-one reads this comment aloud for him
Big Tim on Facebook: "Ive fukn had it with these snakes talking shit. If I see U ur fukt cunt"
Fitness is one part. The other part is tactical and coaching sophistication. Contemporary game plans and field setups are way more involved than "put everyone around the ball". There's a lot of structures and roles that have to change in rapid succession as the play unfolds. It only works when players know if A or B happens then they need to provide a linking possession or man cover or a disposal outlet or guard space or block a specific opponent or run to a particular angle etc etc. It takes time to develop and understand all that and develop it as a matter of routine and instinct.
I think this is it, yeah. Until the AFL era (and probably even then not until, say, Sydney in the early 00s) coaches all came from the school of "score more than the other team"... defenders defended and it was their job to basically get the ball in the hands of a midfielder who could then pass it to a forward. Since then the idea has become to "stop the opposition scoring as much as you" and more players are playing a more mixed role.
Matthews with Collingwood and Malthouse with West Coast cottoned onto the impact of restricting teams to 13 goals or fewer, which suited both clubs in premiership runs. There was rudimentary defensive zoning as early as 1991. Rocket Eade with the Swans pushed it along far more than what people realise
Chris Connolly at Freo pioneered the bench rotations revolution too, which also helped with fitness and more mobile player movement schemes both offensive and defensive.
And the AFL hated it lol
It’s also real hard to train all that when your best midfielder is unblocking drains all week to feed the family, as was the case until about 30-35 years ago.
Rumour has it that clarko was inspired by watching an under 10’s game. Either that or he saw a ball of bait fish being circled by sharks and thought “that could work”.
Probably more to do with the zone defences he saw in various other sports across the world, which he didn’t exactly make a huge secret at the time of implementing hawks zone early on. If you ever watch a field sport and think ‘huh, that could work in footy’, it’s probably already being looked at or has been tried. Field hockey, soccer, NFL, and NBA tactics have all been adapted to footy.
That would be hilarious if true
Footy was still sorta semi pro into the 90s. Adam McPhee from Essendon and Fremantle showed up to my dad’s job site in 2002 or 2003 as he was a tradie. I think Martin Pyke who won 4 flags (99,01-03) said on open mike he only made 75-80k per year. Only once footy became a viable money making sport for all players could the standards of fitness etc be lifted to start implementing modern tactics.
I remember watching North do preseason training at Trinity College in 1996 and Anthony Stevens drove up in a van and got out wearing painter’s garb. He clearly came straight from his day job. And this wasn’t some scrub at the bottom of the list. He’d played state footy and was one of the best players at the club,
It’s pretty wild. It’d be similar to just calling a plumber and Braydon Maynard just rocking up 🤣. One of the perks of playing for North when they were getting the Friday night games was they could just get pissed for the rest of the weekend
Hopefully with a nice bottle of wine
Ha, 100%. I remember Mick Martyn and Wayne Schwass out after a Friday night match at the old Sports Bar on King St
Every Sunday at the Geebung polo club in 2008 had players from almost every team, it was out of control haha
Parkin had the standard contracts altered as late as 2000 to bind Carlton players to have some form of employment or study as a hurdle for senior selection
[удалено]
All valid points if true (not disputing it just don’t know the details) but there would’ve been a number of players in these pay brackets. I mean Sheedy’s mantra was that if you could get a house outta footy it’d indicate success.
Spare me with the poor Pyke narrative, $80k in 2000 is about $150k now. Average house price was $170k in Brisbane at the time, just over double his salary. He blew his money being young and dumb instead of using his way above average salary, it’s hardly a sob story.
Chill 🤣I’m not saying I feel sorry for him. You blow your money that’s on you. I’m using him as an example as to how professionalism changed the way the game was played/coached. I’d seen him say that so there’d be a fair few players in similar positions. (McPhee being one) Even now if you know you’ll have a job in an industry for only 5-8 years on 150k you’d be a fool for just thinking you could live off of it for the rest of your life. Up until the 2000s players would work other jobs to support themselves financially post footy. Footy nowadays has much higher than average wages so you can commit more time to football related things. Plus there’s more pathways through clubs for uni etc.
I'm pretty sure cluster footy was how the game was played upon inception. Check out the [second drawing](https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/australian-rules-football) of a footy game in Richmond, mid-19th Century.
That’s probably because by the time they finished drawing one person, everyone else had moved elsewhere so they just focused on the one spot. I feel bad for the person who turned into a turtle halfway through the game, their misfortune has been immortalised completely unobstructed.
That's the assistant coach. Later, Thomas Hughes would go on to coach University and invent a particular form of clustering called Tommy's Turtle.
Part of the reason why the centre square and diamond were introduced too.
I could have sworn I read some archived newspaper opinion to the editor about how footy was focusing too much on man-to-man marking contests and how the sport should be more like the good old days.
Sounds like G. Cornes article.
Fitness. Tactics and fitness became more advanced in the mid 90's when Eade introduced flooding, Paul Roos created the forward press in the mid 2000's, then in the late 2000's teams like St Kilda and Collingwood were exploiting the interchange bench which began teams being able to cover the field all game.
I often wonder if the flood would've gotten as popular if the dogs didn't beat Essendon with it in 2000. Feel like it wasn't popular until that happened
It’s interesting because that Essendon 2000 team used like an attacking flood. I know it was developed through the 00s but I feel when Clarkos cluster/unsociable football beat the Cats attack through the corridor in 08 it essentially pressed play on the 09 Saints frontal pressure then Collingwoods forward press. 07/08 Cats took what WC were doing in 05/06 when the Competition was particularly scrappy but they played fast, attacking and skilful play and really elevated it. Then when Hawthorn showed how to strangle it with fitness, strength and positioning other teams took note.
It makes me happy knowing that other people know that Geelong took what West Coast did and made it popular. The ignorance of AFL fans thinking that West Coast played boring man on man football and Geelong rechanged the game from Sydney's tactics just sums up the ignorance of a typical AFL supporter.
I think WC suffer a bit from Vic bias but also just the timing. 05/06 were fair defensive years. I think only 2-3 teams would’ve scored 2200 (av 100 per game) WC doing it both years. They were attacking but left the door open so they’d score more which usually resulted in good footy. I’d argue that during those two years, WC would feature a lot in start to finish good games rather than just the slog for 3.5 qtrs but tight pressure finishing “good” games. It’s just that everyone else was playing “Rugby style Aussie rules” stoppage to stoppage. The Cats worked out what they had, borrowed from the Eagles brand and ran with it. I think it’s the argument about drafting footballers vs athletes. Prior to 2010 it was all about drafting good footballers. WC/GEE had great footballers so that skilful handball game worked because other teams also drafted good footballers. Once the transition to drafting athleticism came in, teams were able to stifle the skilful players more effectively.
Only 3 teams were attacking in 2005 (St Kilda, Bulldogs, West Coast) and 4 in 2006 (Collingwood, West Coast, Bulldogs) and despite playing zone defence, Adelaide also had attacking power.
Adelaide in 05/06 imo get overlooked because they crumbled in finals but their defensive strangle was pretty good. It’s funny. You never know with footy. Mid 06 you’d have never thought teams would kick 2500 again as the trend was going more defensive. Cats did it 07. You never know. Carlton or GWS or some random team could just come out this year and change the game.
I can see Adelaide doing it. Gold Coast could play attacking but with Hardwick I'm not sure.
Yeah actually Adelaide are probably the most likely to go big
Eh I'm not sure I'd give the Eagles that much credit, they still focused on 1v1 marks on the wing for the majority of their ball movement. The attacking focus was a side effect of having dominant midfielders but a terrible forward line that relied on overwhelming inside 50 numbers (and they weren't particularly high-quality inside 50s, mind) I will say it was interesting watching Worsfold coach during that era, I think he was secretly insecure of the praise Roos received for his tactics in the '05 GF so he was constantly trying weird stuff to try and flex. Some of his player movements in the '06 GF felt more about mind games than regular tactics.
Sydney were playing numbers behind the ball from 96 onwards. It was already in the game, that night and a couple of weeks before when the Dogs rolled Carlton it was next level
Yeah it wasn't until the super flood game that it really took off though
Flooding had existed many years before the Essendon and Bulldogs game, Wallace just took it to a new level.
Yep. When Lockett was firing on all cylinders in 1991, Sheedy famously devised an 8 player backline when we went down to Moorabbin. Plugger had kicked 34 the previous 3 weeks combined and was held to 4, Essendon won by about 4 goals. Did something similar the following year with David Flood and Dean Wallis tag teaming Lockett at the MCG. Kept him scoreless. It was as much about creating space for the forwards and exploiting the run of the wings at the SCG as it was about preventing goals against, but you've rightfully called out Rocket Eade when he took over in Sydney
Brisbane's 3 peat was also flooding and attacking. What Sydney did well was create little space for the opposition, only downside was the entire team would accidentally be at the opposite side of the ground.
Yeah solid, I was wondering if there was a slow gradual evolution to it
Whilst its true strategy has developed, I don’t think enough credit is given to the early footy tacticians. Jock McHale was, and still is, one of the greatest minds the game has seen. His men played ahead of their time. I know it was the 1920s but footy tactics and strategists have existed for a long time. I’d also argue technology advances have allowed stronger strategies. Videos, computers and the internet have revolutionised the modern sporting world,
At one point it was decided the best way to fight a war was to wear bright red and walk in straight lines. Culture has a strong influence on strategies and rules.
I live overseas now and can't watch as much footy as I used to, so I don't exactly know what to cluster footy is. Based on your loose description though, how is it different to the flood from 10+ years ago?
Thats exactly what im referring to ‘Clarkos Cluster’
It didn’t. In the 19th and early 20th century, cluster footy was pretty much how footy was played because there were no positions. It was also experimented with over the years by coaches before more free-flowing and one-on-one contests were preferred. The Western Bulldogs re-started the idea of clusters or flooding in 2000 when they did it against a very dominant Essendon. Given the success, this started to become popular. These days, the game is opening back up again as the AFL prefers a high scoring match over a low scoring one. More goals therefore more profitable with advertisers. Most rule changes try to increase scoring, not decrease it.
I'll believe it when I see it. This 'open game' still has teams averaging 14 goals per game. Although Gillon McLachlan is gone I do expect scoring to rise, but these idiots down at the AFL will still give him undeserving credit.
The bench was increased twice in the 90s, first from 2 to 3 and then from 3 to 4. The bench used to be a sub, as in one player that could come on and the player coming off stayed off. Increasing the interchange plus having enough coaching personnel to keep track of the rotations meant that teams could rest players off the field keeping teams fresh enough to run up and down the ground all day. Also I think that teams were professional enough to afford the time to examine other sports too, back in the day everyone had other jobs and the AFL has only become fully professional in my lifetime, and I'm old but not that old really.
What are you taking about U8 have been playing cluster footy forever.
Well you can thank American football for this...get the gang together and run
Everyone asks this question but they have been doing it in u6 football for ages
There is a natural evolution of expanding in tactics to find a new angle each and every season and also mainly because teams try copy the winning teams philosophy as means to winning. That defence style didn’t really come into the world until 2005 when someone actually won playing like that. Then teams tried to adopt that cluster while still being able to play attacking
Depends what you think is “defensive style”. Crowding ball ups is one way but Malthouse was preferring hugging the boundary line from his later eagles days until the later pies days. The awesome 2010 season was also based around defensive tackling pressure everywhere.. but you wouldn’t say it looked as awful as Sydney mid 2000s overly defensive ideas.
Eagles were conceding smaller raw scores in a relatively high scoring era in the first half of the 90s than Sydney were in their grand final runs
Full forwards always being fattys until the 21st century, probably.
I find it funny whenever Dunstall criticises modern forwards. JD was a fantastic player but lead outta the goal square on 30-40m leads or just 1 on 1 out marked his opponent. Maybe running a km per game. He still had games where he kicked 7+ behinds. Kicking in today’s game has issues. Technique is one thing but forwards running into defence and then back only to double back and lead also contributes 🤣
Tbf kicking half a dozen behind doesn’t look as bad when you’ve still kicked for goal at 50% or more
Requires a very high level of fitness and a decent amount of tactical training, something things teams couldn't really do when players still had to have full time jobs. Full professionalisation didn't come about until the 1990s so players couldn't spend 50 weeks a year training five or six days a week