ONE OF the appeals of Australian football is its free form. Players are not restricted within zones or behind real or imaginary lines, as they are in other football codes. A coach, should he dare, could put all 18 players in the forward line.

Latterly, this strength has proved also to be a weakness. Coaches understand that all successful teams are founded on strong defence. Some put all 18 players in the back half, regularly.

The outcome is that scoring becomes strangled and the game becomes in some instances tedious and an eyesore.

The conundrum for the AFL is to tackle this problem without changing the game fundamentally by introducing no-go zones. No one much likes defensive, grinding, low-scoring football, but nor do most like the idea of more lines, more rules and more grey areas. It is counterintuitive.

Broader thinking is required. Commentator Dennis Cometti recently mooted a proposal that would change no rule, but would encourage more attacking football. It is that teams with equal points on the ladder be graded not by percentage, but by points scored. It almost certainly would have an impact.

Take the ladder now. Percentage only separates positions 4-9, who all have seven wins. The order as it stands is: Adelaide, Collingwood, Essendon, Western Bulldogs, Port Adelaide, Kangaroos.

If points scored was the delineator, it would read: Western Bulldogs, Essendon, Port Adelaide, Kangaroos, Collingwood, Adelaide. Aesthetically, this is how most would prefer it: the free-running, free-scoring Bulldogs highest, pinched and parsimonious Adelaide lowest.

Sydney lies a game behind, with a game in hand. If it beats Collingwood this Saturday, it will rise to fourth on percentage, above all six aforementioned clubs. But if points-for counted instead, it would rise only one place, to ninth.

Look back for a moment. Last year, Sydney and Collingwood both finished with 14 wins. Sydney's percentage was almost nine points greater than Collingwood's, so it finished fourth, with the double chance. Collingwood, which had scored nearly 250 points more than the Swans in the home-and-away season, finished fifth.

The previous year, West Coast would have finished top of the ladder, not Adelaide. In 2004, Hawthorn would have won the wooden spoon, not Richmond. In 2003, Fremantle would have finished fourth, with the double chance, Sydney fifth.

These are hypothetical exercises because teams would adjust their philosophies and tactics according to the playing conditions. But there is no doubt that percentage favours low-scoring, defensively mean teams. Defence is an art, and as practised by Sydney, for instance, highly skilled and prized. But surely there must still be a premium on attack.

This is not a case of pick-on-Sydney or pick-on-Adelaide. The proposal is a refinement, not an overhaul. Doubtless, Sydney and Adelaide would back themselves to win enough games to finish above other contenders anyway, in which case no tie-breaker would be needed.

Besides, good defence is not simply a matter of lockdown. The most prodigious team of recent times, Essendon 2000, was also the meanest that year, and meaner than any team since except Adelaide in 2004. A sure way to stop your opponent scoring is to spend most of the match scoring yourself.

But a move to points-scored would change the game's mindset. Long ago, Malcolm Blight propagated attacking football, saying the game was supposed to be fun, and he could not think of any greater fun than kicking a goal.

His Geelong teams played by his motto and were unfailingly entertaining, though ultimately unsuccessful. His Adelaide teams were entertaining and successful. But that was before flooding.

Carlton, most agree, while not making much headway on the ladder, has been a good team to watch this year. The Blues are the second heaviest scoring team in the competition. They have outscored St Kilda by more than 400 points this year, but — with the same number of wins as St Kilda — sit behind the Saints on the ladder. It jars football sensibilities.

Fans are beginning to vote with their voices. Increasingly, when the point comes where one team plays kick-to-kick across the half-back line and the other zones off and twiddles it thumbs, both sets of fans boo.

Sometimes a team calculatedly rushes behinds, the better either to waste time or re-start play to its advantage. But if that team knew that it might miss the finals by any one of those sacrificial points, it might think again.