It doesn't help your desire to be thought of as an historian, RL1908, to use emotive words like "fearful" or asking if a code can be taken "seriously". A real historian would know that rules like the mark evolved in football to remove the threat of serious injury to players who were still amateur in all codes, with little of the medical advancement enjoyed in sport nowadays.
It's not "desire", but thanks for your opinion. Writing a column piece or posting on a blog or forum is entirely different to writing a complete historical analysis.
I can't change what the code's founders in Melbourne said and wrote about their decision and reasoning - "fearful of injury" is what it was. They never pretended it wasn't the reason. Most men at the time saw rugby the we way today see a sport like base jumping - very few men participated in the sport because of fear of injury.
I'm sorry the word "fearful" conjures in your mind that it is a shot at the "manliness" of Aust rules, but it should be read in context - I didn't just say "fearful", I said "fearful of injury" - it is not the same as saying that Aust rules is a game safe for the timid.
A real historian would know that rules like the mark evolved in football to remove the threat of serious injury to players who were still amateur in all codes, with little of the medical advancement enjoyed in sport nowadays.
Not sure what your on about there - the "mark" was not invented by Aust rules. It was in the first written rugby rules in 1845, and was in soccer's first rules (1863), in gridiron and in RL (in the field of play until the late 1960s, and in-goal from 1986 to today). Rugby in the 1850s was a tough sport, but it wasn't completely devoid of rules intended for the safety of players - Aust rules just took that angle further.
My point in the article was that Aust rules has evolved what was intended merely as a safety rule into a celebrated art form - it is what it is - me putting that down in print draws attention to its origins and evolution, but it doesn't change it. When Aust rules' founders in 1859 adopted the mark rule that weren't thinking of the "speccy"!
That reasoning, to support the players who put their bodies on the line, was part of why rugby league formed in the first place, of course. Attacking Australian football for changing its rules to help player welfare is disingenuous by a rugby league historian, because the whole sport of league was founded on giving a better deal to players.
A "better deal" to keep playing the same game is entirely different to emasculating the game into something else.
All my article did was point out that the original intentions of the founders of Aust rules have been lost in the modern game - that running with the ball should be limited to being just enough to kick the ball, and that the ball should be disposed of by dropping or kicking it rather than hand-passing it.
AFL can do what it want with its game - all I did was pointed out the things it once found intolerable (carrying and passing the ball) are now commonplace and treasured.
If my pointing out these issues makes people (both in Aust rules and out) look at the hand-pass, bouncing of the ball and the mark in a different way, then so be it, but all I am doing is bringing back to the public arena things have been said before, long ago.
See also:
OUR FOOTBALLERS PLAY RUGBY, NOT VICTORIAN RULES
