The Courier | Former Gordon player Matt Callanan has flagged a way to ease the pain on struggling football teams.
ELIMINATING the motivation for top teams to demoralise lowly opponents is the aim of a new proposal being floated by a passionate football fan.
Former Gordon player and now runner Matt Callanan has come up with what he believes is a remedy to a host of landslide results throughout the Central Highlands Football League and other football competitions throughout Australia.
The idea centres around abolishing the current percentage system and instead using head-to-head results to determine final ladder positions in the event of a tie on points at the end of a home and away season.
When three teams are equal on points, the ladder is sorted based on results from games between only those three sides.
Callanan says the method, derived from top level sports such as basketball, will remove the incentive for strong sides to "smash" lower-ranked teams because the magnitude of the result will likely have no bearing on final ladder positions.
He also believes top teams may be encouraged to rest some of their best players rather than pushing hard to kick a big score. This, he said, could give some of the bottom sides the chance to build their lists without being subject to crushing defeats on a regular basis.
Callanan said the percentage system didn't promote good behaviours in football and believed the alternative method was a small measure that could help struggling sides become more competitive.
"Truthfully, it wont change win-loss, but may change the extent," Callanan said.
Callanan's push follows Gordon's thumping 429-point victory over Smythesdale in mid-May, but is timely given the weekend's results in the CHFL. Three matches returned thumpings of over 140 points and there was an average winning margin of 91.8 points across the nine games for the round.
In the Ballarat Football League, the average victory in five games on Saturday was 60.6 points.
Callanan said Gordon's epic win over Smythesdale encouraged other teams to "put the foot down" and crush lower sides.
"I've played when we got belted and what it generally means is less people turn up to training the next week," he said.
"Now that Gordon has done that, it's really how does everyone else react? When Hepburn plays them, how many goals is (Lee) Cox going to kick? He is going to kick 15."
Callanan said one problem with the head-to-head system was when two teams were level on points, but had played out a draw during the home and away season. Then, he said, percentage would be used as a "secondary means of a tie breaker".
Callanan said he would be happy to write a submission to the CHFL board of management for consideration.
