Some clarification before people make unsubstantiated claims.
We always had 18 players on because we were never told to remove a player by the umpire. Yellow cards can be replaced, they were, then the black card was provided and the player was immediately escorted away and our understanding, and the correct interpretation, was that we did not have to take a player off. Note the umpire did not tell us to take a player off as a result.
We had called Benny Goodman to clarify the fact that he had been black carded off the ground, meaning that we could continue with 18 players.
Confusion reigned, the Glen Eira runner sought clarification from the umpire, who I might add never told us to take any extra player off the ground when he black carded our player.
A head count wasthen called, as we were in fact in the process of making a change from the bench, not trying to "sneak" a player off becuase at no stage did we hide the fact we had 18 players on the ground.
We were ordered to have another player taken from the ground incorrectly after the head count and the umpire also awarded a free kick in the goal square.
The umpire confirmed that his interpretation was that it was 15 minutes with one player down.
We in fact had 18 players on the ground for the last 5 minutes of the 3rd term as per the umpire's instructions, and in fact it was still thought we only had 17 on the ground before the resumption of the last quarter but we already in fact had 18.
Therefore:
We complied with the umpire's change in decision (I reiterate he did not tell us to take another player from the ground when he handed the player a black card) despite the fact we had clarification we had a right to have 18 players on the ground.
We did not attempt to sneak a player off, it was a genuine rotation and the situation was ridiculously confusing
We then accepted the gifted goal which completely destroyed any momentum we had achieved (note we were three points down at the time and had been dominating inside 50s),
We played the next 15 minutes with 17 and
Benny spoke on the mobile to the umpires at 3/4 time by his request, not ours.
To say that it was a farce is an understatement, but we handled the situation as best we could given the obvious error and the fact that every man and his dog was sharing their opinions, and furthermore the decision effectively ruined any chance we had of winning a game that was critical to our way forward for the rest of the season.
Full credit to Glen Eira because they were clearly the superior side by the end of the day, but I believe the PAFC handled the sitution in the right manner and did not try and fabricate or mislead in any way shape or form, despite the error having an extremely negative impact on our prospects of winning a very important game.
Will be interesting to see what comes of it but I would suggest nothing. It was a mistake but c'est la vie, our players shouldn't have been so undisciplined in the first place.
Ophidian Old Boys
