Footy fans hate nothing more than the AFL tinkering with their beloved game. Every season brings new rule changes that raise the ire of traditionalists.
So what would the purists make of an experiment that not only throws out the rule book but reinvents the sport?
On Saturday, for the first time, a game of Australian Rules Football was staged with three teams facing off simultaneously.
Played on a round field with three sets of goal posts and a centre triangle instead of a square, the match drew a crowd of 200 curious spectators to a footy ground just outside Horsham.
The three-team game was played with eight players on each side – two full-forwards, two full-backs and four onballers – and five on the interchange bench.
Fifty-metre lines were replaced by 35-metre lines, and the game was divided into 20-minute thirds.
Despite some initial concerns that the match would descend into a congested field of chaos, the fixture was a success, with Taylors Lake taking home the chocolates, winning with a score of 71 points to rivals Noradjuha-Quantong’s 65, and Horsham RSL Diggers’ tally of 56.
The idea was the brainchild of Melbourne conceptual artist Gabrielle de Vietri, who wanted to test what happens when Australia’s national game was turned on its head.
”I went to my first game at the MCG in 2011 and it got me thinking, why are team sports always between two teams? And why is sport either an individual struggle or a binary phenomenon? It’s a tradition that’s so ingrained and I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if you disrupted that gently,” she said.
”It’s not completely subverting it – I’m not trying to destroy football and I’m also not trying to make a mockery of sports or the ritual itself.”
The project, which was funded by grants from the Australia Council and Arts Victoria, has been shortlisted for the $100,000 Basil Sellers Art Prize.
