Flooding (Australian football)

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For other uses, see Flood (disambiguation).

Flooding is a tactic used in the sport of Australian rules football. It involves the coach releasing players in the forward line from their set positions and directing them to the opposition forward area, congesting the area and making it more difficult for the opposition to score. It is commonly deployed to protect a lead, or prevent a rout. This is possible due to the lack of an offside rule or similar restrictions on players field movements.

[edit] History

First used in the 1990s, Terry Wallace and Rodney Eade were the earlier main exponents of the tactic.

One of the most famous instances of this being used was in the Round 21 game between the Western Bulldogs and Essendon at Colonial Stadium in 2000, where Bulldogs coach Terry Wallace successfully quelled the Bombers' scoring power and defeated the team which had won the previous 20 games [1].