[size=9]The AFL should ditch the behind and stick with goals[/size]

The behind is to the AFL what the five-cent piece is to the hip-pocket: past its use-by date and becoming increasing irrelevant, writes Jack Kerr.

The treasured pastime of most AFL fans - or at least the ones crazed enough to call up a talkback station, write a syndicated newspaper column and/or sit on the league's rules committee - is to dream up big changes to the laws of the game.

So let me throw my hat into the ring and suggest the game do something about its most unsightly feature. I'm talking about the behind.

The late Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano once wrote that the goal is the orgasm of a football match. What, you might ask yourself, would he make of the behind - the score you get in Australian rules football for not really scoring? Not a whole lot, I'd imagine.

A behind is worth 1/6th of a goal. Yet its actual value is far less.

In all but a dozen AFL games last season, points made absolutely no impact on who actually won the match. Yes, of 206 games, 194 were won by the team that scored the most goals. That's 94.2 per cent.

It wasn't always like that. A century ago, in the 1915 VFL season, that figure was significantly lower: 88.2 per cent (67 of 76 games.)

So behinds have gone from being a deciding factor in about 1/8th of games to barely 1/20th of games.

Or to put it in another, economical, way: the behind has become the five-cent piece of the AFL. Occasionally useful, but well past its use-by date, and now mostly just cluttering things up.

Behinds have become so worthless that teams just started giving them away last decade. So much so that the AFL acted to clamp down on "rushed" behinds - defenders sending the ball through the goalmouth for a minor score (in order to receive a goal kick).

So why have behinds become such an insignificance?

In the age of indoor stadiums, improved ball technology and uber-professionalisation, kicking it through the big ones has become a much improved artform. Data compiled by the likes of Matter of Stats has found the conversion rate - that is, the ratio of goals to behinds - has gone through the roof since the rules of the game were first drawn up.

Hence we get higher scoring games (even if that has trailed off a little in recent, tactically-nuanced decades). But with high-scoring games also come blowouts. And blowouts are further accentuated by behinds.

"A point for trying" sounds charitable. It gives a sport otherwise hyped on its acts of bravery, daring and warrior-like intensity a hint of pass the parcel.

But in the language of AFL socialism, the behind actually entrenches disadvantage. Rather than being a handout to poorly performing teams with the yips, the behind rewards the profligacy of the elite.

While points rarely decide the winner, they do accentuate a leading team's advantage, the majority of the time.

Take last year's final between Richmond and North Melbourne, which the Kangaroos ended up winning by one goal and 11 points. What could have been a one-goal lead became, essentially, a three-goal lead.

Or May's clash between West Coast and Geelong. Six goals separated them, but the Eagles got an additional four-goal buffer thanks to their massive haul of points: 24 to four.

This should also have the accountants at the AFL worried. Bigger leads mean more "junk time" at the end of matches, and junk time is a very bad spectacle. Cue the theatre-goers heading for the exit, and viewers at home switching off.

One reason television broadcasters love rugby league and are prepared to pay record prices for a sport that attracts relatively small crowds is that blowouts are rare. Games that are tight to the end, or where a lead can be erased in the blink of an eye, keep viewers glued to their sets until the very end. Hence better ratings, and a better chance of getting viewers sticking around for the next show.

Part of the torture of soccer is that the leading team is never rarely safe until the final whistle. It may be a furphy that "two-nil is the most dangerous scoreline", but it is true that that scoreline can be wiped out in a few very sloppy minutes. So hope lingers eternal.

Australian rules football, in creating a meritocratic system where dominance up front is nearly always reflected on the scoreboard, has killed part of that drama.

Even the classic thriller with one team ahead by a few points in the dying minutes would have extra spice if both teams were still looking for the final, winning goal, rather than one team trying to shut the game down.

Even before this season has begun, I've heard a number of angry commentators bemoaning players who can't kick straight. Strangely, these players are actually being rewarded for that. Twelve times last season, they actually won matches.

"It's pretty generous that you get a point for missing a goal," the AFL announced (or at least tweeted) in 2014. Yes, indeed it is.

The behind is to the AFL what the five-cent piece is to the hip-pocket. And like that piece of shrapnel, there are good arguments for getting rid of it.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-17/kerr-the-afl-should-get-rid-of-the-behind/7247012