I wondered what others think about the limitations placed on the use of runners this season?
I suspect the Swans might have inadvertently provided part cause for the change after Jeremy Laidler seemed to linger on the ground giving coaching support in the closing stage of our close win over North Melbourne last year.
When announced I thought it was a good move. But I hadn’t thought through possible negative aspects of not being able to get messages to the players - as first shown by the innovations introduced to provide signals from the boundary.
John Longmire very rarely makes public criticism of the AFL. But he has been vocal twice in recent weeks on the runner change, stating quite strongly that he believes the limitations should be dropped from next season.
His first comments followed Buddy’s re-injury of his hamstring in the match against Hawthorn, after Buddy had spent eight minutes on the sideline waiting for a player to rotate off the ground. Longmire didn’t explicitly say that Buddy’s body might have cooled down too much but that was the obvious implication. Longmire did say they very much wanted Buddy back on but couldn’t get the message out to get a player off.
Then in his press conference after Saturday’s match Longmire expressed frustration that he couldn’t get messages out to support the very young players we had on Saturday. That issue would have been exacerbated because it was a low scoring match with only 14 goals in total. (This wasn’t mentioned by Longmire but occurred to me when I thought about the issue.)
What do you think?
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