The Great Ruck Debate.

[LP]

Even IF we take your side of the debate, what we did with no rucks would not have been expected by you, or anyone else in the AFL....certainly nowhere near the margin it is.

I think you confuse short term and long term, it's why you keep arguing for long term change based on short term statistics.

Short term changes, forced or planned, come with a benefit, they aren't predicted or prepared for by opposition. Like playing a bunch of kids or when a caretaker coach is put in place. They can bring some success but that is not certain, they can also fail dismally. A great example of success is the 1970 Grand Final and the birth of modern football, unplanned and an unequivocal success back then, ground-breaking, but now a predictable and planned for tactic that wouldn't even rate a special comment.

But those short term results are quite different from the long term, when opponents have the time to study and prepare. Some tactics built around no rucks or placeholder rucks might work here or there occasionally, but they are unlikely to succeed once opponents have opportunity to plan and leverage the inherent weakness that such a setup brings.

Actually, the most recent Geelong game is another great example of that, how much easier it would have been for SDK and Blicavs if we only had SoJ or Young as ruck, or if TDK had gone down early leaving BigH, Cripps or Kennedy as our Ruck. It's no longer shock and awe, they've seen it before!