Umpiring rants ~ receive our scorn

[Piesnchess]

Yet, some dickheads on thst SIDE BY SIDE site, reckon the umpires were fine last night and had no influence on the match at all, in answer to one of my posts, I kid you not. Last qtr abomination no effect onthem,nor a double 50 meter penalty, that became a very rare 100 meter penalty . They must be bloody blind as bats.

[aus50ford]

Last few minutes at a centre bounce, it was called back due to poor bounce and when the umpire threw it up, a Footscray midfielder was standing in the circle !!!
So what none of the 4 umpires can see that ??

[Mr Miyagi]

Double page spread — TWO pages! — in Herald-Dumb today, by Robbo, ranting North was robbed by the non-59m penalty call. Despite all the evidence Scott played on and AFl confirms should have been called play on as he clearly stepped off the mark. And not a single word about the illegal holding of Nick Daicos, but apparently “hard” tagging is allowed again. They can get bent.

[piffdog]

Be careful using the AFL statement to back you up in this instance. You can’t bag the league and then use that as a crutch in defence of your position and we all know that in a couple weeks they will put out an announcement justifying something else which potentially isn’t in our favour…

[Lone Ranger]

We ended up getting a goal but wrapping both arms around whisper and lifting him off the ground before the ball arrives might be, just maybe, holding the man. One of the worst non calls I've ever seen.

[Mr Miyagi]

[K]

[lazzadesilva]

lol 😝 the Bendigo drunk at it again. Ask anyone who worked with him at the Bendigo Advertiser Office about this tool and his exploits while working 😗 The dictionary definition of a Neanderthal!

[Gerry Cooper]

^^^
Old Slobbo is a gibbering idiot at the best of times. File under attention-seeking irrelevant hack.

[David]

I may have my black and white glasses on like everybody else here, but I think the AFL are not only technically correct to tick this one off but also voicing a principle that I would like to see implemented far more often, which is to give players the benefit of the doubt before awarding 50 metre penalties.

Whether it works in our favour or not, soft 50 metre penalties are a blight on the game, and it would have been a far worse outcome imo if it had been paid and the game had been decided as a result (something we've already seen happen far too often this season). In this case, Kane is right: the players were confused, the umpire gave an ambiguous call, and rather than doubling down and punishing the players for their confusion, the umpire actually made a common-sense decision in the moment.

I watched the AFL 360 segment and Robbo and Whateley have the wrong end of the stick: they keep talking about players not being entitled to decide that an opponent has played on after taking a mark. But the open question for me is whether it was even a mark to begin with; if the ball travelled 15 metres, it mustn't have been by very far, and my assumption is that that's the reason McCreery and Sidebottom continued putting pressure on him.

That's the whole point of the umpire's whistle: it's to stop the play and to pay the mark, and if it's genuinely unclear whether a mark has been taken and the defensive player isn't trying to unduly hold up play, then the umpire's role should be to assert control, give the marking player his allotted time to dispose of it or to elect to play on, and give the defensive player the opportunity to get back on the mark. That for me is in the spirit of the game, not handing out entirely technical or draconian 50 metre penalties like lollies. (And of course whether it was one or two players is entirely beside the point.)

People moan about umpires over-officiating all the time. You can't have it both ways. My principle always has been and always will be that, if umpires are to make mistakes – and of course they always will – it will be better for the game if they give players the benefit of the doubt. No question that that has its limits and that absolutely obvious free kicks shouldn't be missed (and this is where I think there are genuine issues currently around non-handballs and, until recently, holding the ball), but imo this non-50 wasn't one of them.