I took one for the team and rewatched the first half of the Ess v Bin Chickens game. The official free kick count on the AFL website is 18 Swans - 19 Bombers. By half time the true free kick count is 15 Swans including one OOBOF and one 50m penalty - Essendon 11 inluding one 50m penalty. So the AFL would have you believe that Sydney only get a further three free kicks for the match while Essendon get eight.
Something smells about those numbers. If I can bear it I may watch the second half tomorrow and present a final tally.
It’s the frees they don’t pay that really gets my goat. Even watching last night, the crow throw was in full swing and many of them within 5 metres of the adjudicating umpire. Wtf is the matter with these people?
Nothing’s the matter. The system works in the way it has been designed. The maggots give the AFL (in the unapologetic words of Gil) “the results we need”.
For a stat that is actually quite important and sometimes pivotal in a game, it’s ‘interesting’ how little info they have on this online and during telecasts.
The umps killed our momentum. Vlad just got off the phone with SCOTT MCLAREN, the true umpire overlord who told the field umps to screw Essendon over or he would eat their firstborns.
Oh, I could have a whinge in the match thread about the team, sure. But it would only get lost among the thousands of others. More important, here, is that umpires don’t get off the hook when or just because the team loses the plot, which IMO they sometimes help to orchestrate.
Do you think atrocious umpiring should be ignored because the team isn’t up to it anyway?