catempire
Premium Platinum
I dunno if it’s that big a deal, there’s advantage in collision sports like rugby too.Yeah, it's terrible.
The way it is adjudicated in the English PL is much better - referee spots a foul, raises their arm and points to make it known they've seen it, and then they watch the play unfold. There's a fair bit of leeway for the resulting attack to break down, and if it does within that period the whistle is blown and the ball comes back. That length of time is somewhat arbitrary, but it otherwise works well.
I'm not sure how well that would translate to our game - obviously the upside would take some time to adjust to, as in seeing infringements and signalling them but not whistling.
There's potentially other issues...
Safety, given Aussie Rules is more of a collision sport. Some guy feels a high tackle and stops, only for play to continue while advantage is assessed and they get flattened totally unprepared for it
And the complication of 50 metre penalties - a free kick is seen but not whistled, and the defender knocks the ball out ruining the advantage and in theory giving away a 50. You'd probably have instances of a lot of grey areas where playing to prevent the advantage also technically gives away a 50... and players doing so on the basis "I didn't hear the whistle so assumed advantage was on".
There is a lot more grey in umpiring Aussie Rules that makes officiating certain things difficult - prior opportunity, insufficient intent, advantage etc.
So I don't think it's as simple as the EPL approach. The current method is probably the only truly workable one.
I just think they AFL has been too fearful about giving the advantaged team an… er… advantage. I’d be inclined to just loosen it up slightly as an incremental step. Start by saying we are not going to call the first possession after an infringement back unless the “advantaged” has been disadvantaged. I really can’t see any downside in that.






