When Greg Swann was appointed executive general manager of football performance at the AFL, many saw him as the man to cure all the sport’s ills. He was one of those footy people known primarily by his nickname, a man who projected an air of knockabout affability, a man renowned for getting things done. He would apply “the pub test” to many of football’s most pressing issues: the draft, the rules, the umpiring, the AFL review centre (ARC). “Swanny”, we were assured, was the man who would make footy’s trains run on time.
One of the first things Swann’s predecessor, Laura Kane, did in the role was embark on an overseas study tour. Certain sports, she found, lent themselves to technological intervention. The geometry of tennis and baseball made it far easier to implement. She fast-tracked the trial of ball-tracking technology. But Australian football, she stressed, was an incredibly difficult sport to properly utilise technology. The shape of the grounds, the oval ball, the way goals often come down to the length of a player’s fingernail, all made it tough to land on a definitive decision.
