If the tackle is the pre-eminent skill in AFL footy, then yes, ball-carriers this year are getting away with murder.
One spin, two, then as the manoeuvre threatens to become a full-scale pirouette, a toe-poke of a kick or a centrifugal handball, and it is play on. The days when the 359th degree was considered to be the point at which having the ball became holding the ball are long gone.
The Crows’ Jake Soligo gets caught holding the ball by Campbell Chesser, of the Eagles on Sunday.Credit: AFL Photos
And the crowd howls for “ball”, and howls again at the injustice of it all when it is not paid, except the half that are cheering because it isn’t paid.
The tackle is one skill, but it’s not the foremost, and there is nothing either in the letter of the laws or their spirit that says the tackler must be rewarded for the mere fact of laying the tackle. If they neither dispossess their opponent nor force them into an illegal disposal, then play on it should be.
Here’s another way of looking at it: Yes, the tackle is a skill, but so is breaking a tackle. It’s the 11th commandment: Thou shall not get caught in the act. The clever ones don’t.
Of course, there are layers to this perennial debate. In the........