It’s a Blight on the game
COACHES are squeezing the skill from the game and making life ever tougher for players, newly anointed AFL Legend Malcolm Blight says.
As a result, he fears the AFL is becoming too similar to the rugby codes.
“We have got to be careful when you get 36 players in an eighth of the ground,” Blight said yesterday, a day after being declared an official Legend of the game by the AFL.
“I don’t reckon that was our game. I just reckon we have got to be careful we don’t become rugby (league) and we don’t become rugby union – they’re great games, let them stay there.
“We should keep our space. Space is what makes our game on the ground better.
“We can show our skills, and I just think at the moment the players are being hard done by, the way the game is perhaps being coached and the way it’s going.
“They’re not being able to display their skills but learning more how to tackle.
“And I don’t think that is the way the game should go.”
Gold Coast-based Blight celebrated his Legend status in subdued fashion, enjoying a few red wines with fellow inductees.
“Just quietly headed back to the hotel and just sat down with a few of the inductees and had a little sip,” he said.
The premiership player and coach, who won South Australia’s Magarey Medal and Victoria’s Brownlow Medal, said ranking the latest honour was impossible.
“It’s one of those things you don’t expect,” he said.
“I never thought Legend status changed much in the Hall of Fame point of view but I guess the perception is you probably did OK at the game.”
Blight joins 26 others as official Legends of the AFL.
Suns specialist coach and Swans premiership winner Barry Hall was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Hall revealed in his speech on Tuesday that he was still affected by a 2008 incident where he felled opponent Brent Staker with a behindplay punch.