That article basically sums up Paul Roos. It's 'stay off the lawn' stuff masked as progress. He continues to take one experience he had and then extrapolates it to the rest of the league without contemplating that his experiences might not be representative.
Instead of considering whether 'playing each other once' creates its own inequality, or why he is against the 17/5 model, he just dismisses the requirement of objective reasoning and says it's obviously better. Instead of getting a view from the Players Association whether the membership would be in favour of a 20% pay cut to play fewer games, he bases his assessment on a conversation he had with one bloke.
He simultaneously argues the AFL should be precluded from changing the rules - many of which are aimed at making the game safer - while arguing for a rule change to introduce a concussion sub and adding a whacky play-in system and reducing the draft order to chook lotto. How do you argue for leaving the rule alone, and then two paras later say the players need to be protected so the rules need to keep up? I'm not against those ideas, but some internal consistency in the piece would be nice. Even those ideas he doesn't flesh out, it's as if the detail should be someone else's problem. The devil, with the AFL, is always in the detail.
Some 18 year olds will want to earn a living wage playing football. If someone is old enough to vote or join the army, does it really make sense to prevent them from the career they want for a year for the sake of some young lads who find it tough. I don't have a strong view either way, but there's no thought to the counter-points to Roos arguments.
Like, who pays for the costs of the reserves competition? Does it make sense to put the Freo young lads on a plane every second week? What's the consequence for the WAFL or SANFL. Do some homework you nonce. He clearly stated he didn't feel like thinking about footy, but clearly he can't go a couple of months without pontificating about it. A little extra thought would have been nice.
