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Ruckman outcry follows Grljusich comments

The recent outcry this week for the removal of the line across the centre circle comes weeks after columnist George Grljusich brought the problem to attention in his article on April 13th.
The article was headed "Ruckman at risk with centre circle".
Here is the article.

April 13th.
Ruckman at risk with centre circle.

Round three of AFL competition saw three ruckmen go down in a heap.
Michael Gardiner may miss two months of football and Matthew Primus looks like missing the rest of the season and Darren Jolly also has a knee injury.

While the line across the centre is not necessarily the direct cause of these injuries one cannot help but feel that it is contributing to wear and tear on the big men in the game.

In recent times the list of injured ruckmen reads like a "who's who" of the modern game..Keating, McDonald and King, as well as those injured last weekend. White, Ball, Darcy, Ottens, Stafford and Koschitzke have all had spells out of the game in the not too distant past.

The line across the centre was introduced more than twenty years ago to avoid physical interference to ruckmen, but it could actually have had a more damaging effect than the style of play it was designed to eradicate.

The ruck contests at the centre bounces these days are like collisions between two trains travelling in opposite directions on the same line. It is actually causing mayhem because it is increasing the risk of damage. There are many that believe that the constant banging into one another causes a great deal of wear on ruckmen's bodies, making them more vulnerable to injuries at the centre contest and around the field. One might ask about the effect the tactic of tunnelling has on ruckmen's legs.

In the old days ruckmen had choices which the line across the centre has eliminated. The modern rule sets-up ruckmen because everything is so predictable, and causes them to meet with greater force than is necessarily desirable. This force is front-on. It is force of the worst kind.

By introducing the experimental 10 metre outer circle for ruckmen to begin their contest for the centre bounce in this years Wizard Cup the AFL flagged that there is an issue about the nature of the physical contact these big men have to endure. A five metre run-up undoubtedly lessens the force of the impacts that occur under this experimental law.

While officials evaluate the merits of the experimental rule ruckmen are going down like nine-pins.

There could be a lot of merit in saying that there are major consequences flowing from the collisions at centre bounce downs. It seems to make the big players more suseptible to all kinds of injuries; little by little, if you like.

The line across the centre circle is the only law in football that mandates direct physical contact. The monotonous regularity of such forceful front-on contact could be contributing significantly to eventual breakdown.

No other players on the field are required to run in opposite directions and collide with full force. This can happen 30 or 40 times in a game.

The easiest way to line-up someone in football is if you know exactly where they are going to go. Even in a fair contest, the ruckmen who like to jump into an opponent are meeting with greater force than if they were running in side by side, or even if they were holding one another as they used to.

The big men are such an integral part of our game that they have to be protected as much as possible and I am not sure that the line across the centre is the right thing to have.