Opinion Umpiring: Corruption or Incompetence, or both

[Pt Augusta Power]

We had a good run at football park. No coincidence that the shift to ADELAIDE oval coincided with gill becoming ceo? We’ve been ****ed by the umps at home since we landed st AO.

Noted too that the crows advantage of free kicks at home became evident with the move to AO (and Gill becoming ceo)

 

[Janus]

It's not incompetence or corruption.

It's because our players are soft front runners who consistently get led to the ball because they don't want to work hard enough. And more importantly, don't want to work hard when things are going against them.

I've said it countless times - contested possession is about intent. How badly you want it. You want it more than the opposition does, and more often than not, you'll get the free kick. And if you don't...go harder next time.

Take a look at Sam Gray. Goes for a contested ball, takes out the legs of a player - free kick. Now, it's debatable whether it was or not, because others have done the same thing and not got pinged this year. But the problem wasn't the free kick, it was the fact that after that incident Sam went missing for the entire game. Instead of going harder at the contest, he shied away from it, the same way that Aaron Young did in a game when he got pinged for a ludicrous holding the ball decision.

Is it fair? Life isn't fair. ******* control the things you can control and stop whinging about the things you can't. Even with the 17 extra free kicks that West Coast got, that still means that they had 23 extra contested possessions.

That's our problem.

 

[chiwigi]

Its probably a greater concern of the ones they dont pay, either completely miss or are too scared to call, that should some how be recorded and are a greater impact but you dont have stats for that. The umpiring department used to put out stats in the early '00's about missed frees, but they stopped doing it because they couldn't handle the bad PR around those stats, plus they knew people laughed at how ridiculously low the missed free stats were.

People complain about contested possession and the stupid 'if you are first to the ball...comment', if you are pinged in every 50/50 you CAN'T contest properly as the frees kill you, which is what happens too regularly.

It isn't corruption, just incompetence and unconscious bias.

 

[B0ydmental]

His name was Jordan Bannister

 

[Lawnchair Larry]

Artistic freeform by umpires ruining the game.
Time to think about drones in combination with current TV, beaming images back to 3 adjudicators in the stands.
If 2/3 of these adjudicators press their independent red "pay a free" button then message immediately sent to the presiding umpire who is now just a facilitator of the process.
Fanciful I know but this is the sort of thing that needs to be trialled preseason.

 

[JimmyBeerCans]

They are getting worse with media exposure, they talk to players too much on field, believe they are some sort of team themselves etc. we should barely know their names in reality.

Interviewing umpires before and after games lol never thought we'd sink to those depths

 

[Contested Marx]

His name was Jordan Bannister

With a name like that...You just know he lived in a boarding school hoping to have prep boys sit on him

 

[xflamedancer]

It's not incompetence or corruption.

It's because our players are soft front runners who consistently get led to the ball because they don't want to work hard enough. And more importantly, don't want to work hard when things are going against them.

I've said it countless times - contested possession is about intent. How badly you want it. You want it more than the opposition does, and more often than not, you'll get the free kick. And if you don't...go harder next time.

Take a look at Sam Gray. Goes for a contested ball, takes out the legs of a player - free kick. Now, it's debatable whether it was or not, because others have done the same thing and not got pinged this year. But the problem wasn't the free kick, it was the fact that after that incident Sam went missing for the entire game. Instead of going harder at the contest, he shied away from it, the same way that Aaron Young did in a game when he got pinged for a ludicrous holding the ball decision.

Is it fair? Life isn't fair. ******* control the things you can control and stop whinging about the things you can't. Even with the 17 extra free kicks that West Coast got, that still means that they had 23 extra contested possessions.

That's our problem.

Im thinking a little of column A, a little of column B and a lot of this ^^. You get pinged on a dodgy decision and you get gunshy about going in for the next contest.

 

[Forzaport]

Umpiring is so bloody psychological and we're doing absolutely nothing in that space.

If we were proactive about fixing our umpiring situation and did it smartly, the umpires wouldn't be so quick to call all those 50/50s against us and they may actually give us a few frees in our F50. I mean come on, Dixon clearly had his arm held back in a marking contest, play on. A jumper tug to Kennedy at the other end is a free kick, multiple times.

Expecting it to balance out in the wash doesn't help you in the big games. And until we do something about it, we'll continue to get screwed over by the umpiring.

 

[manureid]

The Scott brothers are able to influence umpires without being fined almost on a weekly basis. I know we ask the AFL for clarification on some stuff, but it clearly does nothing. Time to call them out 'Scott' style publicly.

 

[Tibbs]

The Scott brothers are able to influence umpires without being fined almost on a weekly basis. I know we ask the AFL for clarification on some stuff, but it clearly does nothing. Time to call them out 'Scott' style publicly.

Your avatar scares me!

 

[1954]

There are times the AFL as an entity looks corrupt, and there are times it looks incompetent, BUT I am laying the reason for the regular umpiring reamings we receive, directly at the feet of David Koch and his HUMBLE club, every one's second team BULLSHIT!

Blind Freddy's grandma's canary could see that making a f****** noise ala the Krey bros and the fruit tingle bloke from the Charles Dicken's novel Oliver Twist works, and while we just bend over and take it nothing will change, and we will continue to get shafted.

 

[Freak Dodgeball Accident]

Umpiring is not going to change a result like yesterday's no matter what happens, but it certainly does feel like every other team gets a "Home Ground boost" that we do not.

But you have to think, how many of their goals were a result of free kicks? I'm not going to put myself through watching the game again, but I'd say that there were at least 5 or 6. Sure, some might be there, but there is far too many random ones which we never seem to get.

 

[OneGreatClub]

But you have to think, how many of their goals were a result of free kicks? I'm not going to put myself through watching the game again, but I'd say that there were at least 5 or 6. Sure, some might be there, but there is far too many random ones which we never seem to get.

Yep

 

[finbarr]

It goes further than the on field officiating, and this will be proven beyond any doubt tomorrow night when Tom Hawkins cops no more than a fine.

 

[S.Patrol.G]

It goes further than the on field officiating, and this will be proven beyond any doubt tomorrow night when Tom Hawkins cops no more than a fine.

Jon Ralph started the defence immediately where "they" (AFL media) suggested it was actually the umpires fault for entering Hawkins' space too quickly and aggressively, resulting in Hawkins' "natural reaction" to someone entering your space. The final summation was that it was likely to be found that the "umpire had contributed to the incident".

 

[finbarr]

Jon Ralph started the defence immediately where "they" (AFL media) suggested it was actually the umpires fault for entering Hawkins' space too quickly and aggressively, resulting in Hawkins' "natural reaction" to someone entering your space. The final summation was that it was likely to be found that the "umpire had contributed to the incident".

Lol Ralph, please define what exactly constitutes personal space on a football field. Lol geez.

 

[Hopam002]

The Scott brothers are able to influence umpires without being fined almost on a weekly basis. I know we ask the AFL for clarification on some stuff, but it clearly does nothing. Time to call them out 'Scott' style publicly.

Exactly this. There is no fine for complaining about a decision inside the box, but it does get air time. Follow this up with private questioning during the week and they will quickly get the message.

There are ways to make it known that sh@t umpiring will not be tolerated... Martians

 

[S.Patrol.G]

Umpiring is so bloody psychological and we're doing absolutely nothing in that space.

If we were proactive about fixing our umpiring situation and did it smartly, the umpires wouldn't be so quick to call all those 50/50s against us and they may actually give us a few frees in our F50. I mean come on, Dixon clearly had his arm held back in a marking contest, play on. A jumper tug to Kennedy at the other end is a free kick, multiple times.

Expecting it to balance out in the wash doesn't help you in the big games. And until we do something about it, we'll continue to get screwed over by the umpiring.

Couldn't agree more. The last thing we want is the club whinging about everything publicly, but our current default position of saying nothing and providing the lube is even worse. In my opinion, Hinkley does nothing to aid and protect his players, in particular Dixon and R. Gray, hence the position we find ourselves in of being reamed by the umpires when away and nothing better than breakeven at home.

 

[manureid]

And then you get Scott (Geelong) in the post match after Hawkins slaps the umpires hand saying things like, 'well you can see nothing in it right, common sense will prevail here' etc... Already getting the message out to try to preempt any sanctions. They are clever little bastards.... Meanwhile, Ken, err yeh, well we need to get better at stuff ya know.

 

[Garibaldi Red]

Jon Ralph started the defence immediately where "they" (AFL media) suggested it was actually the umpires fault for entering Hawkins' space too quickly and aggressively, resulting in Hawkins' "natural reaction" to someone entering your space. The final summation was that it was likely to be found that the "umpire had contributed to the incident".

That defence really helped Greg Williams

 

[S.Patrol.G]

That defence really helped Greg Williams

Greg Williams never had that defence. He had the defence the media created, much like most Tribunal findings or MRO decisions. The media shouldn't be allowed to comment, or at the very least, predict outcomes.

 

[S.Patrol.G]

And then you get Scott (Geelong) in the post match after Hawkins slaps the umpires hand saying things like, 'well you can see nothing in it right, common sense will prevail here' etc... Already getting the message out to try to preempt any sanctions. They are clever little bastards.... Meanwhile, Ken, err yeh, well we need to get better at stuff ya know.

Not only post-match, but every week uses his AFL360 platform to influence impending decisions and upcoming matches.

 

[Smithy7]

Your forgot the North Melb shafting in Tassie

And what a bloody shafting that was .. geez

 

[Portology]

All I can think of is to actually stop play and review decisions via video. Humans simply can not umpire afl. I would like to think they are just incompetent and not corrupt.

Time out. A 30 metre exclusion zone bar the players concerned and the umpire while decisions are made.

Just random thoughts again. There has to be some way of getting better calls made and field umpires may not be the best way of doing it.

reviewing decisions is maybe half of it (we actually don't know) but it doesn't get you a single review of those pesky non-decisions called "play on".

either way we're going to have a very long game lol. at the 'middle extreme' of reviewing all actual decisions but no pro-active review of 'non-decisions', add 40x 30 seconds for review of frees currently paid. rough average number of frees x up to 30s review per goal reviews. hopefully the referral/decision ratio is similar to that for goal review today. so maybe 10x 15s average per required referral = 3-4 minutes per game, at roughly 3 times per quarter intrusions.

reviews *alone* will be VERY intrusive, won't actually fix about half the problem, and will tend to scapegoat umpires, other things being equal.

I think the AFL needs start with a long term base-lining exercise, in conjunction with simplifying some rules. the number of 'errors of non-decision-making' can't be fixed without a solid baseline of situations where decisions don't happen, to put it clumsily. we need to do better than these zig zagging hard to umpire tactical rule changes most years to 'fix' the latest random thing deemed aesthetically unpleasing by snotty nosed execs. and if that process is just another AFL screw up type inquisition - if the bloody AFL allow the media to frame it that way - experienced umps will leave and few will want to step up. as odd as it sounds to "we, the aggrieved" there has to be something in it for umpires too. the goal has to be actually make it easier to umpire the game more accurately. It would be tempting easy and dumb to rush to implement a public in-game review process that reverses a few decisions and emboldens a few idiots out there in the stands. This is a much bigger deal than goal reviewing.

either that, or we wait for real time 3D virtual umpiring based on massive arrays of sensors in delicate places allied to vision processing from multiple angles at once that would be totally impossible for hoomans. it's a little way off, kids. but you could still yell at them... "bloody silicon maggots"