Analysis Some Rather Eyebrow Raising Free Kick Facts...

[Meteoric Rise]

I mean if the crowd is doing enough to affect decisions then we’re doing our job surely? Not our fault if the umpires get intimidated, just like it’s not your fault when they let countless FAs go unnoticed. Also we’ve been fairly sh*t away from home this year, especially with our attack on the ball, so I’d imagine this would also sway our free kick stats slightly.

Quite a few clubs with similar stats there too. Port, Freo, WC, Geelong (would be interested to see the specific GMHBA stats here).. and what do they all have in common? One sided crowds. To me that’s saying the umpires are incompetent and easily swayed by external pressure, which is also potentially understandable given the thousands of rules and interpretations running through their head at any given moment.

But there’s definitely not some preconceived bias of “Oh Richmond’s playing, let’s remember to not pay too many their way”. I think it’s just a mixture of some umpires being sub par and the complexity of the rules and interpretations.

Frees Against is easily explainable imo but I’m not sure why you’d be ranked last for Frees For other than perhaps a lack of marking contests in comparison to other sides? I’d imagine that’s where we’d get most of ours, along with the ruck.. and conversely we wouldnt give away many their either due to the talls being our strength.

TL;DR. It’s swing and roundabouts. There’s incompetence not bias. Something which Richmond benefits from as well. Non issue imo, other than the sh*t standards of this competition.

There are no shortage of people prepared to make off-handed statements to the effect the cause of Richmond’s historically significantly high free kick deficit isn’t umpiring bias. As you have in your first post on this thread C7.

But then you(and others) come out with statements to the effect you think umpires are biased in certain ways, such as the one I have highlighted in your post above. This is not to embarrass or pick on you as I think a lot of what you have said has made sense.

This is what I struggle with, you(and others) are acknowledging umpires can be biased in certain ways, by pressure from crowds, by players drawing attention to infringements etc. This make perfect sense to me, they are human afterall. But you are now saying they belong to a class of human beings who are susceptible to these types of suggestive conditioning….while at the same time stomping on any suggestion of a possibility they could be selectively conditioned in other ways. All people are vulnerable to this at all times, so i don’t see how it could be safely ruled out as a possibility.

To my knowledge, nobody here is seriously suggesting that Gil and Hocking and the Ump’s Advisor and all the umpires conduct big anti-Richmond planning meetings to try to work out how to screw us out of free kicks etc. So it is rather tilting at windmills to respond here as if that is the case. Collective biases can be formed much more subtly than that.

Have the Tigers got an all time significantly negative relative free kick differential? Yes, in 2021 they are in the top few if not top of the last 700 AFL individual teams’ seasons. So this isn’t like your average “someone has to be the worst in the AFL for free kicks” scenario, it is way more pronounced than that.

Do we as Richmond supporters perceive that we have had a raw deal with umpires especially this year? Yes, I would say so, that is my perception for sure, and I know the perception of many others on here. Not all games, I think the particular focus has been on the 6 losing games and maybe only 1-2 of the 7 winning games. There have been games like v Essendon where a lot of us thought we had the benefit of the umps. And v Adelaide where the umpiring seemed as broad as it was long but probably favoured us overall as well.

Do we think there is a massive organised conspiracy against Richmond by the AFL, media and umpires? I don’t think so. My perception is most posters on here don’t believe that to be the case. It would not be impossible, but it is implausible. I certainly don’t believe it.

Do we think there are more subtle forces at play or more simple and believable explanations for certain things running against Richmond in 2021 and the last half of 2020? Yes, I think a few of us suspect this to be the case. Plenty in the media seem to be invested in Richmond’s demise. We have had a bit of a disappointing 12 months in MRO deliberations. One particular match our players copped 3 fines. All appealed, all overturned on appeal. Seemingly insignificant but i see strange things no matter how insignificant as needing to be explained so that particular sequence of events really caught my eye.

What are the odds of the MRO making 3 incorrect adverse decisions in one match against players from one team, without being biased for some reason against that team? At the time my initial reaction was to scream for Michael Christian’s head. Subsequent revelations have shown I likely had the wrong man...

Due to that sparking my interest I delved a little deeper to find Steven Hocking is effectively the final decision maker in all MRO cases. Steven Hocking has the umpiring department under him. He is also the biggest single influence on rule changes. He is the person who sets directions for the umpires it seems on an ever changing basis. Rules of the week, new interpretations….all Hocking. Hocking briefs the media, likely leaks information to members of the media(these would be standard practices for someone in his position.) Hocking has effectively nobody to answer to in his role. So who knows if this might be the answer or not, but it would sure make a few things add up if it was. I would certainly love to see the effect on Richmond and the competition in general if Hocking were to be removed from his role or a much better governance structure put in place around his role to make it less conflicted and more accountable.

I don’t think the umpires are bent. I don’t think they are deliberately biased. But I don’t think they have umpired a lot of Richmond games entirely fairly in 2021 and I would sure like to know if there is a reason other than random incompetence for this. I also think they have umpired more poorly than in recent seasons and I am pretty sure this is due to the wildly different interpretations they are now being asked to make.

If you watched all those Richmond losses in full, and noted all the obvious errors or line ball decisions from a fair and neutral viewpoint, I am pretty sure you would see that the 14-24 average free kick differential in those games wasn’t caused solely by our game style. At least some of it is due to non randomly distributed incorrect umpiring.

 

[Coach_Required]

So, we need an acting coach...

That wont work, Grimes tried it last year remember and was crucified after the Essendon game.

 

[Dr Tigris]

There are no shortage of people prepared to make off-handed statements to the effect the cause of Richmond’s historically significantly high free kick deficit isn’t umpiring bias. As you have in your first post on this thread C7.

But then you(and others) come out with statements to the effect you think umpires are biased in certain ways, such as the one I have highlighted in your post above. This is not to embarrass or pick on you as I think a lot of what you have said has made sense.

This is what I struggle with, you(and others) are acknowledging umpires can be biased in certain ways, by pressure from crowds, by players drawing attention to infringements etc. This make perfect sense to me, they are human afterall. But you are now saying they belong to a class of human beings who are susceptible to these types of suggestive conditioning….while at the same time stomping on any suggestion of a possibility they could be selectively conditioned in other ways. All people are vulnerable to this at all times, so i don’t see how it could be safely ruled out as a possibility.

To my knowledge, nobody here is seriously suggesting that Gil and Hocking and the Ump’s Advisor and all the umpires conduct big anti-Richmond planning meetings to try to work out how to screw us out of free kicks etc. So it is rather tilting at windmills to respond here as if that is the case. Collective biases can be formed much more subtly than that.

Have the Tigers got an all time significantly negative relative free kick differential? Yes, in 2021 they are in the top few if not top of the last 700 AFL individual teams’ seasons. So this isn’t like your average “someone has to be the worst in the AFL for free kicks” scenario, it is way more pronounced than that.

Do we as Richmond supporters perceive that we have had a raw deal with umpires especially this year? Yes, I would say so, that is my perception for sure, and I know the perception of many others on here. Not all games, I think the particular focus has been on the 6 losing games and maybe only 1-2 of the 7 winning games. There have been games like v Essendon where a lot of us thought we had the benefit of the umps. And v Adelaide where the umpiring seemed as broad as it was long but probably favoured us overall as well.

Do we think there is a massive organised conspiracy against Richmond by the AFL, media and umpires? I don’t think so. My perception is most posters on here don’t believe that to be the case. It would not be impossible, but it is implausible. I certainly don’t believe it.

Do we think there are more subtle forces at play or more simple and believable explanations for certain things running against Richmond in 2021 and the last half of 2020? Yes, I think a few of us suspect this to be the case. Plenty in the media seem to be invested in Richmond’s demise. We have had a bit of a disappointing 12 months in MRO deliberations. One particular match our players copped 3 fines. All appealed, all overturned on appeal. Seemingly insignificant but i see strange things no matter how insignificant as needing to be explained so that particular sequence of events really caught my eye.

What are the odds of the MRO making 3 incorrect adverse decisions in one match against players from one team, without being biased for some reason against that team? At the time my initial reaction was to scream for Michael Christian’s head. Subsequent revelations have shown I likely had the wrong man...

Due to that sparking my interest I delved a little deeper to find Steven Hocking is effectively the final decision maker in all MRO cases. Steven Hocking has the umpiring department under him. He is also the biggest single influence on rule changes. He is the person who sets directions for the umpires it seems on an ever changing basis. Rules of the week, new interpretations….all Hocking. Hocking briefs the media, likely leaks information to members of the media(these would be standard practices for someone in his position.) Hocking has effectively nobody to answer to in his role. So who knows if this might be the answer or not, but it would sure make a few things add up if it was. I would certainly love to see the effect on Richmond and the competition in general if Hocking were to be removed from his role or a much better governance structure put in place around his role to make it less conflicted and more accountable.

I don’t think the umpires are bent. I don’t think they are deliberately biased. But I don’t think they have umpired a lot of Richmond games entirely fairly in 2021 and I would sure like to know if there is a reason other than random incompetence for this. I also think they have umpired more poorly than in recent seasons and I am pretty sure this is due to the wildly different interpretations they are now being asked to make.

If you watched all those Richmond losses in full, and noted all the obvious errors or line ball decisions from a fair and neutral viewpoint, I am pretty sure you would see that the 14-24 average free kick differential in those games wasn’t caused solely by our game style. At least some of it is due to non randomly distributed incorrect umpiring.

MR, well put. To me I suspect that our issue is that we play a certain style of football - hard at it, high pressure, 'chaotic'. SHocking seems to hate those things. His explanation of changes is always about free ball movement or protecting the player. If you look at that through the lens of AFLX (i.e. the AFL's internally invented perfect game) you see what his ideal for footy is. We are the opposite of that. So SHocking is the final say, as you state, and he effectively controls the umpires, rule interpretations and rule changes. So quite deliberately he is aiming to get what he sees as the 'best product'. That I hate his ideal isn't important for this thread. But what it does mean is that the way Richmond plays is antithetical to the major influence behind the scenes for umpiring. It might be Gil and others all sitting together thinking that there is a better way of doing AFL and all pushing in the same direction.

The big problem for Richmond is that we have a recipe for winning premierships, and that pushes against the flow of the AFL HQ.

I really hate ALFX - I can't even watch by beloved Tigers. But what I see is a belief system in play that just is pushing in that direction.

 

[Dunger]

That wont work, Grimes tried it last year remember and was crucified after the Essendon game.

Clayton "Sloth" Oliver flops like a rag doll at the slightest touch yet he gets the free more often than not and no one questions it...

 

[Meteoric Rise]

MR, well put. To me I suspect that our issue is that we play a certain style of football - hard at it, high pressure, 'chaotic'. SHocking seems to hate those things. His explanation of changes is always about free ball movement or protecting the player. If you look at that through the lens of AFLX (i.e. the AFL's internally invented perfect game) you see what his ideal for footy is. We are the opposite of that. So SHocking is the final say, as you state, and he effectively controls the umpires, rule interpretations and rule changes. So quite deliberately he is aiming to get what he sees as the 'best product'. That I hate his ideal isn't important for this thread. But what it does mean is that the way Richmond plays is antithetical to the major influence behind the scenes for umpiring. It might be Gil and others all sitting together thinking that there is a better way of doing AFL and all pushing in the same direction.

The big problem for Richmond is that we have a recipe for winning premierships, and that pushes against the flow of the AFL HQ.

I really hate ALFX - I can't even watch by beloved Tigers. But what I see is a belief system in play that just is pushing in that direction.

I think that you have raised another factor that needs to be considered and could go some way to explaining any Hocking bias against Richmond.

I was quite disturbed by the MacKay case for this reason. Both as a general footy supporter and as a person who aspires to be fair minded. But also as a Richmond supporter.

That piece of play from MacKay was I think classic Richmond surge footy. He charged at full speed in a straight line at the ball and was going to surge it forward even if only by fumbling it in chaotic fashion. This is mostly how Richmond over-ran the Cats late in several recent finals. For most teams it is unstoppable, undefendable. But it is great and effective footy and great to watch.

Virtually nobody else in the world apart from Hocking and David King and Whateley thought MacKay should be suspended for that. He was essentially charged with playing surge football.

So I think there is likely something in what you say.

 

[_RT_]

The word "differential" is hiding the underlying problem most of us have with free kicks.

We will happily concede free kicks "against" as mostly justified. OK?

What we struggle with is free kicks "for". Statistics clearly show that teams infringe less against Richmond than they do against everyone else. How can that be? If it was a one off, or just a couple of teams then maybe ok, but it's a very significant trend that is inexplicable. Do we get tackled technically better than others? Weird if true. Kicks into forward 50...do our forwards not get infringed against, compared to other teams' forwards? It lacks credibility that defenders infringe against other key forwards but not ours.

That's the problem we have. If you can explain how that might be possible in the ordinary course of a season, please do.

I mentioned last night and it wasn't accepted as a reasonable reason, but IMO it comes from the way we play, so I'll try and explain in more detail.

One of the key planks to our game plan is winning the footy through high pressure around the contest and either winning the footy at the contest or forcing turnovers

We have a group who play the footy first and not the man and if you take the time to look at their career free kick counts, you'd see the likes of Cotchin Riewoldt Prestia Houli Astbury & Grimes who have positive frees for v free against for their careers. These guys will invariably win the free kick because they beat their opponent to the footy and take front position which leads to being rewarded.

Then there is the likes Rioli & Castagna whose primary job is putting on defensive pressure in F50 who also have positive free kick counts through their careers, they get rewarded for chase down tackles or getting to the contest first and getting held or tackled illegally and get rewarded.

We also have the likes of Martin Edwards Bolton Lambert who are our playmakers in the midfield who have negative free kick counts and more often than not these guys are generally pinged for holding the ball, illegal disposal, illegal tackles, but you will cop those because more often than not when they do win the contest it gets the ball going our way and good things happen.

Below them we have players who are asked to put a heap of pressure around the midfield and contests who will invariably get pinged for infringing on their opponents. These players are the likes of KMac Pickett Nankervis Caddy Graham Aarts

Finally we have the rest of our defenders Baker Balta Short Vlastuin Broad these guys for the most part are ball players first and foremost, but they are also defenders so every now and then they'll get caught out trying to get away with a jumper grab or a lingering tackle when a forward will get rid of the ball and they can't see or an arm over the shoulder when trying to spoil a marking attempt.

This is why I don't buy into the bias claims, but believe it's the style of game that we play that causes our drastic free kick differential and hopefully by breaking it down like I have above it gives a clearer picture of what I mean.

 

[Livonski]

That wont work, Grimes tried it last year remember and was crucified after the Essendon game.

And funnily enough the whole staging thing has disappeared. Grimes and Vlastuin the only two cited. Correct me if I'm wrong.
This Is Anfield the Miers, Oliver examples somehow got missed....like the round arm to Pickett's head Meteoric Rise

But maybe that's the problem. If that round arm was to Miers' head he'd still be on the ground as we speak and the perpetrator would've copped 6 weeks.

 

[Livonski]

I mentioned last night and it wasn't accepted as a reasonable reason, but IMO it comes from the way we play, so I'll try and explain in more detail.

One of the key planks to our game plan is winning the footy through high pressure around the contest and either winning the footy at the contest or forcing turnovers

We have a group who play the footy first and not the man and if you take the time to look at their career free kick counts, you'd see the likes of Cotchin Riewoldt Prestia Houli Astbury & Grimes who have positive frees for v free against for their careers. These guys will invariably win the free kick because they beat their opponent to the footy and take front position which leads to being rewarded.

Then there is the likes Rioli & Castagna whose primary job is putting on defensive pressure in F50 who also have positive free kick counts through their careers, they get rewarded for chase down tackles or getting to the contest first and getting held or tackled illegally and get rewarded.

We also have the likes of Martin Edwards Bolton Lambert who are our playmakers in the midfield who have negative free kick counts and more often than not these guys are generally pinged for holding the ball, illegal disposal, illegal tackles, but you will cop those because more often than not when they do win the contest it gets the ball going our way and good things happen.

Below them we have players who are asked to put a heap of pressure around the midfield and contests who will invariably get pinged for infringing on their opponents. These players are the likes of KMac Pickett Nankervis Caddy Graham Aarts

Finally we have the rest of our defenders Baker Balta Short Vlastuin Broad these guys for the most part are ball players first and foremost, but they are also defenders so every now and then they'll get caught out trying to get away with a jumper grab or a lingering tackle when a forward will get rid of the ball and they can't see or an arm over the shoulder when trying to spoil a marking attempt.

This is why I don't buy into the bias claims, but believe it's the style of game that we play that causes our drastic free kick differential and hopefully by breaking it down like I have above it gives a clearer picture of what I mean.

Thanks for trying, it's a pretty good explanation.

But I don't buy it. While the whole chaos style sounds Richmondy there's a bunch of others that do similar, at times. THe pressure guys especially, that's not dissimilar to how most mids operate. Our chaos is pressure, for sure, but it's mostly about how we move the ball in a rampant unplanned fashion, which is why it's successful.
I just hate how Dusty gets pinged every time the ball spills out when tackled...and the whistle blows in a nano second but if Oliver, Selwood, or Dogs just throw the thing around it's ok.

The one against JGTI last game. He tackled the WCE player who drops the ball, play on (if Dusty that's a free kick against). JGTI then fights to gain possession, at which point he is literally jumped on, he's lying on his back with players squashing him. That's is not a legit tackle. SO instead of a free for it's a free against.

Pickett gets round arm to the head, nothing. Then he catches the next guy high. Spotted, free kick and a suspension.

 

[Meteoric Rise]

I mentioned last night and it wasn't accepted as a reasonable reason, but IMO it comes from the way we play, so I'll try and explain in more detail.

One of the key planks to our game plan is winning the footy through high pressure around the contest and either winning the footy at the contest or forcing turnovers

We have a group who play the footy first and not the man and if you take the time to look at their career free kick counts, you'd see the likes of Cotchin Riewoldt Prestia Houli Astbury & Grimes who have positive frees for v free against for their careers. These guys will invariably win the free kick because they beat their opponent to the footy and take front position which leads to being rewarded.

Then there is the likes Rioli & Castagna whose primary job is putting on defensive pressure in F50 who also have positive free kick counts through their careers, they get rewarded for chase down tackles or getting to the contest first and getting held or tackled illegally and get rewarded.

We also have the likes of Martin Edwards Bolton Lambert who are our playmakers in the midfield who have negative free kick counts and more often than not these guys are generally pinged for holding the ball, illegal disposal, illegal tackles, but you will cop those because more often than not when they do win the contest it gets the ball going our way and good things happen.

Below them we have players who are asked to put a heap of pressure around the midfield and contests who will invariably get pinged for infringing on their opponents. These players are the likes of KMac Pickett Nankervis Caddy Graham Aarts

Finally we have the rest of our defenders Baker Balta Short Vlastuin Broad these guys for the most part are ball players first and foremost, but they are also defenders so every now and then they'll get caught out trying to get away with a jumper grab or a lingering tackle when a forward will get rid of the ball and they can't see or an arm over the shoulder when trying to spoil a marking attempt.

This is why I don't buy into the bias claims, but believe it's the style of game that we play that causes our drastic free kick differential and hopefully by breaking it down like I have above it gives a clearer picture of what I mean.

I like the attempt to put meat on the bones of your argument RT. But does this go any way towards explaining why we are doing appreciably worse this year than previous years?

In terms of free kick differential we have basically gone from being one of the worst couple of teams of the 18 in the comp to being one of the worst of 700 teams in recorded free kick history.

I am not really sure I actually noticed much of an issue with umps until this year. This year there are 8 opponents who have looked a serious threat to Richmond:

Sydney, free kick count 25 v 15 to Tigers, I thought the umpires made a lot more errors against Richmond in that game

Port 22 v Richmond 12, Ditto

Melbourne 24 v Richmond 17 I didn’t see the whole game, but the nonsense around the two goals Melbourne got in one passage of play from skirmishes off the ball looked dire to me.

Bulldogs 17 v Tigers 21 I don’t recall having too many thoughts about the umpiring overall in this match.

Geelong 21 v Tigers 11 ditto, from long memory only I cannot recall thinking a lot about the umpiring.

Giants 19 v Tigers 12 I thought there was some pretty poor umpiring over the course of the night against Tigers on the whole and if I recall correctly the media did not miss the one or two that went our way late.

Lions 28 v Tigers 16 I would defy any fair minded person to sit through this game and make any assessment other than the Lions got a hell of a run from the umps that night.

Eagles 25 v 15 Apart from the the few late ones that have been highlighted, some of which were judgement errors, some technical errors by the umps I hadn’t noticed anything against us throughout the match.

So these 8 matches the overall count is 181 v 119 against us. That establishes nothing on its own, however the deficit from those games alone(given we are roughly free kick neutral in the other 5 games) has gone to give us a worse relative free kick differential after 13 rounds than just about any of 700 teams have had over 50 years. Of those 8 matches my instinctive impression even after allowing for my pro-Richmond bias was that we had been significantly unfairly treated by the umps in 4-5 of those matches. That is a hell of a lot. I would normally expect to feel that way from a sample like that about once or twice maximum. And the extra 3-4 times that it seems to have happened has been enough to take us from around where we normally are with free kicks to all time levels.

 

[_RT_]

Thanks for trying, it's a pretty good explanation.

But I don't buy it. While the whole chaos style sounds Richmondy there's a bunch of others that do similar, at times. THe pressure guys especially, that's not dissimilar to how most mids operate. Our chaos is pressure, for sure, but it's mostly about how we move the ball in a rampant unplanned fashion, which is why it's successful.
I just hate how Dusty gets pinged every time the ball spills out when tackled...and the whistle blows in a nano second but if Oliver, Selwood, or Dogs just throw the thing around it's ok.

The one against JGTI last game. He tackled the WCE player who drops the ball, play on (if Dusty that's a free kick against). JGTI then fights to gain possession, at which point he is literally jumped on, he's lying on his back with players squashing him. That's is not a legit tackle. SO instead of a free for it's a free against.

Pickett gets round arm to the head, nothing. Then he catches the next guy high. Spotted, free kick and a suspension.

The key part of your reply is that there are a bunch of others who do similar at times, point being that they don't play at our level of intensity from siren to siren, week after week. Same again with you comparison of our mids to opposition mids, when you say not too dissimilar, it's not the same level of attack on the ball or the opponent. We rely on putting the opposition under pressure when they have the footy so that we can force dirty disposal that aids our plan of getting the turnover and then being able to catch them out of position on the counter attack.

As for Martin getting pinged as soon as he is tackled and the ball spills out, that is how illegal disposal should be paid, but cast your mind to how many times Martin gets tackled and is able to use his strength while getting spun around to still get off a legal disposal or use the fend off and get himself out of trouble. It happens more often than when he gets stopped dead in his tracks, so of course umpires are going to reward that type of successful tackle, and if we're talking about umpiring the game fairly then that is what you want to see happen.

Shane Edwards is no different to the likes of Oliver Selwood and the Dogs players with his quick hands, yet we never seem to question if he actually handballed it, we just accept that he did, because he wears our jumper, but I'd suggest if he played for the opposition we'd be calling every handball a throw like we do with opponents who also display quick hands like his.

IMO it's no coincidence that as our game plan has evolved from early 2017 when we'd have quarters or halves where our pressure was not as high to now where we pretty much go flat chat from bounce to bounce that we have gradually become more and more penalised. It's the nature of the beast when you rely on controlled chaos(pressure) as much as we do. It's also no surprise that when the pressure ramps up come September that our game goes to another level and most of the opponents can only play at the level for 1 or 2 games out of 3-4 needed to win a premiership.

Have a look at our winning margins since 2017 in Finals

2017 - 51 36 & 48
2018 - 31
2019 - 47 19(40 point turnaround after half time) 89
2020 - 31 6(we had 6 more scoring shots straight kicking is probably a 4 goal win) 31 (46 point turnaround after half time)

One game decided by less than 3 goals in 10 finals wins and in most of the games our pressure either broke teams early and allowed us to cruise or we ground them down in the first half and ran over them in the second.

When you add all of what I've said last night and tonight about the perceived bias in umpiring together it's why I'm convinced that it's our style of play that causes us to be penalised so much and not some vendetta from the AFL or bias from the umpires. If there was a bias we'd have all our players getting pinged more than they receive but we don't we have a fair number of them who get rewarded

 

[Livonski]

As for Martin getting pinged as soon as he is tackled and the ball spills out, that is how illegal disposal should be paid, but cast your mind to how many times Martin gets tackled and is able to use his strength while getting spun around to still get off a legal disposal or use the fend off and get himself out of trouble. It happens more often than when he gets stopped dead in his tracks, so of course umpires are going to reward that type of successful tackle, and if we're talking about umpiring the game fairly then that is what you want to see happen.

That’s exactly my point.
Dusty gets pinged when it spills, ok by me if that’s paid everywhere else.
It is not. That’s my point.
eg. WCE last week.
Exactly my point. Dusty gets pinged, WCE doesn’t. That’s one reason why we get less frees for than against.

 

[Aeons]

MR, well put. To me I suspect that our issue is that we play a certain style of football - hard at it, high pressure, 'chaotic'. SHocking seems to hate those things. His explanation of changes is always about free ball movement or protecting the player. If you look at that through the lens of AFLX (i.e. the AFL's internally invented perfect game) you see what his ideal for footy is. We are the opposite of that. So SHocking is the final say, as you state, and he effectively controls the umpires, rule interpretations and rule changes. So quite deliberately he is aiming to get what he sees as the 'best product'. That I hate his ideal isn't important for this thread. But what it does mean is that the way Richmond plays is antithetical to the major influence behind the scenes for umpiring. It might be Gil and others all sitting together thinking that there is a better way of doing AFL and all pushing in the same direction.

The big problem for Richmond is that we have a recipe for winning premierships, and that pushes against the flow of the AFL HQ.

I really hate ALFX - I can't even watch by beloved Tigers. But what I see is a belief system in play that just is pushing in that direction.

How is it in any way a good idea to give one individual so much discretion and power over a competition? The flaw is absolutely in the way the afl is governed...on one hand you have polo douche gil poncing around with his terrible fake tan who has never so much as kicked a footy in his life and then on the other hand soft as butter s.hocking who is an out and out geelol stooge....

 

[Aeons]

We need to get a hold of geelols chucking coach..the game tonight against the dogs is a deadset disgrace. More chucks than a bulimics dinner party...

 

[Dr Tigris]

How is it in any way a good idea to give one individual so much discretion and power over a competition? The flaw is absolutely in the way the afl is governed...on one hand you have polo douche gil poncing around with his terrible fake tan who has never so much as kicked a footy in his life and then on the other hand soft as butter s.hocking who is an out and out geelol stooge....

That they haven't been railroaded out of town says a lot about how the AFL is run. For all his faults Eddie has stated support for when the Tigers have stood up to the AFL, because we are one of the few clubs no beholden to them for $. So Gil and his mates can run the comp by holding the finances over most of the clubs. Completely appalling situation.

 

[All Aust]

What can we do about it?
Probably nothing, just have to try and play through it.

Own it, market a positive spin. Slogan it:

Hang with the bad boys

Play some Rosie Tats- BB4 - before each match.

 

[JAKLAUGHING]

Doesn't seem to be a big issue with NRL with dominant Teams being penalised to even out the whole comp...even with the upstart newer side from Melbourne that won a couple of GF's!!! Seems only the AFL has the current need to tamper with both the game rules and successful Team outcomes namely Richmond...

 

[Kyusss]

For the last 4.5 seasons we've ranked top 3 for frees against and yet we've won 3 flags and made a preliminary final. Yet there is some AFL mandated conspiracy to stop us. When the fact of the matter is that we're in the same position we've been in each year bar 2018 at the same point of the year and the funny thing is, if the Port and Eagles results were reversed we'd be sitting 9-4 and in 4th spot and I doubt anybody would be complaining about the umpiring, in fact we'd all be sitting back knowing that we're primed for another tilt.

in fairness they are two of the games we were absolutely mauled by poor decisions.

 

[Marcel Proust]

What a farce.

And what a champion team we've created for this to not effect us.

It effects the tigers but they have still be winning.

#BestDynasty

 

[smasha]

It's the swallows where they get us.

Even the Willy game,the disease is not just held to the AFL.

Expect some more swallows this Friday.