These orchestrators, or evil geniuses, have fundamentally changed the character of the game, with a little help from Rodney, Mick, John and others. Rodney Eade introduced the flood, Roos turned it into the forward press, as did Lyon at St Kilda, and, at Collingwood, Mick Malthouse added love of the boundary line.

Gyms, rugby league-style tackling and aerobic capacity have created the new siege game perfected in all its ugliness by Fremantle. I call it Tackleball and Stoppageball, Robert Walls uses "rolling scrum", Drew Morphett "mobile wrestling", Ted Hopkins refers to Ugby (fusing rugby and ugly). In this Umpireball, the game of stoppages and throw-ins, the umpires get more touches than most players.

The Lyon game is the extreme version of the forward press: ugliness personified and "Smotherball" are the latest deformities imposed on the game. Footy is about the contested ball. It is also about kicking and marking, handballing and goaling. At its best it is hard but honourable, as in tough finals. There is nothing honourable about a culture expressed in the new Lyon language of football. No coach has ever referred as much as the Freo supremo to the game as "war", to "going into battle", to a "brutal" game.

The new game, where more than 30 players are inside the 50-metre line of one side, and where the ball ricochets from one scrambled or smothered kick or handball to another, might interest some rugby aficionados. "Manic (or maniac) pressure" is not football. That's why seasoned commentators, including Walls and David Parkin, celebrate watching Geelong play, and more recently Hawthorn.

Fremantle is appreciated for endeavour and for winning tight games. While, as with Lyon's losing St Kilda sides, some talented players, such as Nick Riewoldt and Lenny Hayes, Matthew Pavlich and Michael Walters, temporarily redeem the ugliness, the game they play is not football.