From Adelaide Advertiser
Reported by Michelangelo Rucci
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TIMES change — even SA-Victoria football relations have remarkably mellowed.
It is 31 years (almost to the day) since Kevin Sheedy strained SANFL-VFL diplomacy by playing four — rather than three — interchange players in the Australian Championship state game against Neil Balme’s SA team at Football Park.
On Sunday, the SANFL will host the VFL in the first State game played between the leagues on the redeveloped Adelaide Oval — and the home team has given up its significant points of difference.
There will be 50m penalties, as in the AFL and VFL rule book — rather than the SANFL’s 25m rule. The cutaways to the SA coach’s box to monitor Graham Cornes’ reaction to these penalties will be priceless.
There will be the AFL’s interpretation of the “deliberate out-of-bounds” rules — rather than the SANFL’s “last-disposal” penalty for kicks and handpasses that fall out of play.
And there will be no cap on interchange rotations — not the 90 enforced in the AFL nor the 60 imposed in the SANFL. There is no cap on rotations in the VFL State league
The Victorians will feel at home at Adelaide Oval on Sunday — just as Sheedy did on May 14, 1985 at Football Park when the “Big V”, with an extra man, won by 57 points and then had the win stripped by the now-defunct National Football League.
Which is more staggering — that the SANFL has no “home-ground” rules as would apply in baseball ... or that Australian football has more than one law book while trying to claim it is a national sport?