If you go back and watch games from the 70's and 80's, it's nothing to see a player 10m from the contest standing with his hands on his hips just watching, possibly from fatigue but also possibly because now the intensity and scrutiny of intensity is far greater.
The reality is that Richmond do play an exciting brand of footy. This year we had to contend with teams parking themselves inside our forward 50 hoping to springboard out into their open forward line. That made a lot of our games hard to watch. We keep a spare back, but we don't park the team back.
The AFL has to get it out of their mind that we are going to see each team kick 20 goals in a game. Players now cover way more ground thyan they used to. If you limited interchange to 10, which is probalby about the number you had in a game right up to the late 90's you still will not get high scores, because players are o much fitter now.
Think back to our side in 1995. We used Stuart Maxfield as a second half shock weapon. He pretty much didnt get onto the ground in the first half in a lot of games. Imagine using your interchange like that today!
If they wantto de-congest the game, maybe they should take out the first 4 rows of seats at the MCG and expand the ground. Take out 15 rows at the SCG, and bulldoze the stands on the wings of Kardinia Park and move the boundary line 40m back where it's supposed to be. Maybe that will help.
Maybe the solution is to give prime time viewing to the teams that actually score. If you want to coach like Ross Lyon, then you don't get seen on TV and don't get any sponsors. The Pies get prime time no matter how putrid their game plan.