SO another AFL pre-season has come and gone, and another NAB Cup has endured its customary negative reviews.

Yes, it’s true that the pre-season is exactly that - the warm up for the main event. Fans and players aren’t a big wrap for it, and as a coach I hated it. Like eating healthy and avoiding tastier ‘junk’ food to have a higher quality of life, the pre-season games are not about win at all costs but are about investing in the future.  

We’re used to football when winning is everything. Not when winning is third or fourth priority behind things like match conditioning, appropriate minutes for certain players, and positional experimentation. As it is in the NAB Cup.

I even think that the popular pre-season trend of senior coaches handing over the reins to an assistant-coach is partly because he’s happy to focus on the longer term big picture without the subtle ownership pressure of winning (and losing) that the match-day coach will inevitably feel.

But as a marketing tool for the premiership season the NAB Cup performs a vital and indispensable function. We should be down on our knees thanking NAB for sponsoring it, and the broadcasters for putting it on free-to-air television in the second week of February.

One of the underpinning principles of elite sport is that the search for a better way must be never-ending. So if anyone has a better method of putting footy into the public mind so early in the year, I’m yet to hear of it.

The other really valuable function of the pre-season competition is the opportunity to trial rules and interpretations to see how they work under match conditions.

Some are quickly discarded. Like the rule stopping players from claiming a mark when the ball was kicked backwards inside the defensive half.

This was scrapped when it became apparent that it would not deter teams from flooding and would in fact encourage the practice of getting big numbers between the ball and the opposition goal.

But other trial rules have been successful. Like the nine-point goal from outside 50m.

I’ve seen enough of this during the NAB Cup over the years to think it would enhance the game during the premiership proper.

We’ll always find people preferring the conservative view that football doesn’t need it. And yes, that’s probably true.

But the real question is, in the quest to find a better way: would it make the game better; more exciting; more spectacular?

In 40 years I’ve seen countless rule changes that have undeniably made our game better. Like the centre square. The holding the ball / holding the man rule which stops a player bouncing the ball when he is about to be tackled. And the 50m penalty.

Also, the 10-second time-limit on disposing of the ball after a mark or free kick, and the quick kick-in when a behind is scored.

That was achieved by not having to wait for the goal umpire to wave his flags and by storing half a dozen footballs behind the goals. If nothing else, we now never play with a heavy, water-logged footy.

Don’t tell me these rule changes haven’t been good for the game. Yet if we’d stuck to our conservative ways we would never have considered any of them.

My one proviso on implementing the nine-point goal in the premiership season is that from a set-shot situation the man on the mark is on or outside the 50m arc.

In this year’s NAB Cup, we saw occasions when a 50m penalty from the wing earned a nine-point chance from well inside 50m. It didn’t seem to be in the right spirit.

I like the concept of a player in this situation having to make a decision. Does he choose to go for six points from, say, 15 metres? Or does he go for nine points with the opponent on the mark on the 50m line. To succeed would require a kick of at least 60 metres.

For me, one of the beautiful features of our game is the long kick. So a ball bouncing through for a goal from long-range should not be worth nine points. It should require a minimum 50m carry.

I also like the experimental rule whereby umpires throw the ball up around the ground. So much so that I can see no reason for it not to be implemented in the main season straight away.

I still accept one of the games unique traditions is  that we bounce the ball at the start of each quarter and after a goal, but a throw-up around the ground gets the play going much more quickly. If that reduces even slightly the number of players around a stoppage, it’s a good thing.

This year we trialed, with widespread approval, a rule whereby players had to decide in a possible advantage situation whether to play on or not.

It was always wrong that an umpire had to adjudicate on whether an advantage really was an advantage, and the attacking team often got a double-dip when a failed  play-on  was recalled.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that rule was implemented in the premiership this year too.

In time, we must also find a way to better reward the player who is first to the footy. Because this year’s NAB Cup proved yet again that the odds are becoming increasingly and heavily-stacked in favor of the tackler.

That’s one for the game's guardians to monitor before next year’s NAB Cup when we’ll do it all again. And probably many will still not fully appreciate the enormous big picture worth of a televised pre-season competition. Some things never change.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.