Bench Player Introduced

Well, what a season. The Dingoes and the Sons of God took of the titles in the end and now enjoy the off season. As we’ve mentioned a couple of times over the years we’re always looking at improving the AFR experience so that we can say we’re better than the rest. If you’ve spoken to me over the past few weeks you’ll know that we’re all looking forward to the 2009 season starting (believe it or not the off season is when the AFR keeps me busy).

If you’ve listened to the podcast you’ll now know what the major announcement is, if you haven’t then stay tuned!! Before I get to that, this season we messed around with the fixture to try and make things interesting – although it seemed to work ok we believe it’s probably fairer that everyone plays each other before the MSD. So next year we’ll change a couple of things:

• Round 1 & 18 – will be replays of the pervious season Grand Finals and grudge matches
• Round 9 & 10 – will be a double header round
• Everyone will play each other before the MSD

Ok ... So what’s the major change? As of the 2009 Season we’re introducing a Bench (emergency) player. This request has been raised a couple of times over the years but during the season Steve Hooker came up with a suggestion that planted the seed for this change. We understand that not everyone sits down and listens to the radio and watches the internet to see who is in and out each weekend – but we didn’t want to penalise people that do so … this is the new rule.

• Each team can name 1 additional player to their starting line-up; this will be called a Bench player.
• If the Bench player is used during the round then they will get 25% taken from the players score: for example – Kerr is named at Bench and is called up in to the midfield he gets 15 kicks his score for the position will be 11.25.
• Bench player scores will be rounded up; using the example above the final score will be 11.3.
• If a Manager selects a Bench player in round 1 this will be the Bench player until we’re advised other wise (like what happens with the team each week).
• If a Manager decides to name a Bench player NO other changes can be made to this team over the weekend. If a Bench player is not named the Manager can make as many changes as they like. However if a player pulls out in the late Sunday game and they have no one to replace them – bad luck.
• If a Bench player was previously selected and the following round the Manager would like to make changes “on the fly” you need to advise us when naming your team to un-select the bench player. If you don’t, please see point 4.

By introducing this rule we’re hoping that this will allow people to enjoy the AFR more and also cut down on the games lost by teams by small margins because a players pulls out. Over the coming weeks Steve or myself will update the AFR Constitution and I’ll re-post it on the website if you’d like to have a look at all of the “rules”.

Do you like the new rule? Or hate it? Let us know at afrevolution@hotmail.com

Thanks again everyone for a successful 2008 season, we hope everyone has a Merry, and more importantly safe, Christmas … we’ve only got (approx) 170 days until the NAB Cup starts J 

Regards,

Andrew Caple & Steve Watson
AFR Commission