I saw a bloke, I think it was on Boxing Day, in the middle of the day, with the temperature about to crack the 37.778, going for a run in his footy jumper. Port Adelaide I believe.

Which got me thinking. Not that long ago, running in a football jumper in that sort of heat would be considered a suicide attempt but with this new sports wool stuff on the cutting edge of science, he was actually cooler running around in the hot sun than most people laying back on their vinyl beanbags watching the cricket.

You can forget your fancy air conditioners and swimming pools nowadays. Thanks to the boys at the CSIR, you can just put the kids in a footy jumper each and send them for a run. It could be the solution to global warming but it's ruining football.

Now, Dennis Commetti and his funboys have been pushing pretty hard over the last couple of years to have some sort of modified interchange rule limiting the number of changes you're allowed to make of keeping the bench down to 2 players. The theory is that if the players get less time to rest then they won't run as much, the game will slow down and there will be less flodding.

Unfortunately, like most rules thought up by people who make a living talking bollocks, it's going to have the opposite effect to what they expect. Instead of dragging the game back to the 60's, the coach will dump anyone who can't run 30km at top pace and still kick on both feet. No room for ruckmen or slow blokes with good skills who like to take a breather at the start of the last quarter. Just 16 teams like the Adelaide Crows.

But this Port Adelaide supporter with nothing better to do on the day after Christmas than run laps around the suburbs has given us the solution. Wool.

This sportswool is an abomination on the game. It's keeping the players cool, allowing them to run longer and is responsible for all those hideous pre-season guernsey concoctions that have plagued the AFL for the past decade.

Ban the stuff.

The AFL should give each club a couple of sheep and a few pots of dye at the start of the year. They can sheer the sheep, prepre the wool and get some volunteers to knit some custom jumpers while using the phrase 'oldschool' as often as possible.

No matter how fit they are, the players are going to get hot, tire quicker and be forced to stop and have a scratch every few minutes. It'll be like making them run with a tyre around their back but much more stylish (although harder to wash).

The game will slow down again. The coaches don't have to employ a bloke from Nasa to count their moves and the West Coast Eagles will once again have something to keep their hands busy on the outside of the fence instead of assaulting the opposition players.