No I won't because I think it is true. I think we are responsible for the free kick differential more than the umpires are screwing us over. You are acting like it is a big stretch to say this when it isn't?
I disagree there as there were a lot of first and second year kids out there with immature bodies . Balta was magnificent until he ran out of puff.
I don't watch VFL. A game earlier in the year that we won easy. I did see us lose the GF in 2017 and last night's game was similar. Willy & Port are good football teams. And being able to create a team on its own merits and not have to fit in half an AFL list looked like a plus. Willy didn't have to play as tall as we did, to get games into CCJ & Ivan. Or bring in players coming off medium term injury.
I disagree with your premise. Every player in the league goes at every 50-50 contest pushing the limit of legality. It's not a Richmond thing.
Of course the umps are neutral (up to a point.) And yes we give away free more than for some reason, and Brown gets a lot of free's because his arms are so long and the only way to stop him is to push and chop him, but that doesn't as you say explain why we get so few frees. The last few weeks we only received about 10 free's. That is not many. And last night in the last wasn't it about 24-7 at some stage. 7 free's is not many whether we are rougher than some or not. We don't get many it seems. Why?
The only one I agree with is Riewoldt being judged more harshly than his peers. I really don't know why he is treated like this, but apart from that I think we are penalised according to the rule book most of the time and do not receive free kicks as much as others because of what the rules are.
Although I am no expert in Aussie Rules, I believe that our negative free kick differential is because we are not that great in physical and aerial contests but will not concede contested possessions/marks without giving it everything we have. Therefore, we end up getting the opposition high, pushing them in the back or chopping their arms more often than other sides. This is why I think we end up conceding a lot of free kicks. On the flip side the opposition don't do this as much because they are either good at physical/aerial contests or do not try everything they can to prevent themselves from conceding a contested possession. Also, we don't get a lot of holding the ball free kicks either because I think we tend to apply pressure immediately after an opposition player takes possession of the ball. It is then deemed that the opposition player had no prior opportunity so the ball is thrown up in the air. In contrast, other teams don't tend to have as high of a pressure rating as us when we are at full flight, meaning that they allow us to make a move before laying a tackle. Thus, they end up with more holding the ball free kicks than we do.
Smith would never have played anything remotely like the pressure that was on last night. He played a couple of Bendigo Pioneers games last season and the season before local Sunraysia footy. Don't know what the league was like where he played before getting a few games at VFL, but you can bet it wouldn't have been anything like last night. Also, almost no footy this season, playing him last night in front of perhaps some more deserving VFL boys would have put extra pressure on, probably didn't do him any favours. If he is selected next week, at least last night is out of the way.
