Beveridge slams AFL over "ridiculous" rule changes

Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge has called out the AFL’s “ridiculous” rule changes amid the game’s ongoing transition period under EGM Greg Swann.

With the ARC issues and umpiring concerns troubling Anzac Day weekend, Swann has swung an immediate change, removing ARC’s ability to call back the play following a 55 second delay during St Kilda’s win over West Coast.

Beyond the ARC, the AFL has also introduced sweeping changes to the National Draft, with the academy and father/son bidding system completely reworked, effective immediately.

Speaking during a press conference ahead of Round 8, Beveridge didn’t hold back on the current state of the game and the lack of strong leadership.

“It’s a bigger picture consideration for me around the equities in the game rather than just changing a rule for this year,” Beveridge said on Wednesday.

“We were part of the change because we brought Jamarra (Ugle-Hagan) in back then, and it was another reaction to pressure from clubs.

“What has happened – the AFL are a punching bag at the moment. When you think about the actual game, the rules, whether it’s the Tribunal and appeals – we are trying to make things perfect in a game that’s chaotic.

“The unfortunate thing is that you guys and girls are the ones that the AFL are paranoid about. They don’t want you to criticise them, but every time you do, they go and change something.

“It’s not this regime’s fault; it’s the operational regime of the last 15 years that keep changing things. Now we’ve got a tax act of regulations that’s too hard to administer.

“Compliance is difficult, so we’re at a point now where we need a Peter Jackson to go in and do a review of how to strip it all back and make it simple again. As I said, the game is chaotic, it’s not black and white.

“One of the ridiculous things that’s happened recently is the between the arcs ‘last possession’ thing. Ultimately, if there’s confusion as to who it went off, what did we used to do? We used to ball it in.

“How about we just ball it in again? People are going to make mistakes, and it might have come off someone’s boot, but no, we have to bring another layer in, and now we have to reverse it.

“We haven’t been strong enough to just go, ‘yep, mistake was made, move on’. This is another one where we’re making a change on the run, there’s eastern seaboard and northern academies that have been going on for the last 10 years, there’s clubs complaining about getting their own…

“We have to strip it all back and get it right. The inequities in the draw, in the draft system, in the whole thing – it just needs to be sorted out, and that’s just one isolated thing that’s happened recently.

“There are some bigger challenges ahead for City Hall, I just hope they engage someone like a Peter Jackson that can go in in an independent way and say, ‘hey, this is what we’ve got to do’. If we have to go back 10 years to make the game better, let’s do that.

“The other thing too, and it’s you guys again, because of the money in the broadcast… because we’ve tried to create more goals in the game, we’ve turned the game into this ridiculous game of ping-pong because we want money from broadcast because there’s more ads during the goals.

“It can’t all just be about revenue. It’s got to be about the beauty and the nature of the game. We’ve got some challenges ahead.”