As someone who has umpired football, and had mates that have umpired in the AFL system. I will tell you from my experience, that decisions don’t get analysed as much as people would think.
Because umpires descisions are ‘subjective’… the umpire will argue to his coach that he made the right decision. I’ve been in this position. As I said earlier in a post, the coach might suggest that there should be more consistency about ‘the call’, but he can’t enforce it, because every decision is judged in isolation.
Unless there is a complete howler, which is plain wrong, there isn’t a lot for coaches can do. We know this, because the umpires department will say ‘95% of decisions are correct’.
They spend more time on coaching communication, team work & positioning than they do on analysing decisions.
Great summary by Shaw - UMPIRES DO NOT CHEAT! It’s more likely they’re incompetent, make poor decisions under pressure and confuse themselves with so many on the ground (4)
You have to wonder why similar player types are interpreted so differently. All captains, head over the ball, fair, both don’t argue too much.
Heppell : For 15, Against 18
Selwood: For 43, Against 26
Pendlebury; For 20, Against 8
Conclusion: Maybe Heppell needs to learn how to play for free kicks?
Key forwards. Regularly double teamed and get their arms chopped. Major focal point. Stats over last two seasons.
Daniher: For 44, Against 57 (29 games)
Brown: For 64, Against 24 (36 games)
Franklin: For 55, Against 57 (33 games)
Riewoldt: For 39, Against 46 (34 games)
Conclusion: Daniher and Riewoldt are way off the pace when it comes to getting paid frees…especially Riewoldt - but why? They’re both constantly infringed… Brown and Franklin get more, with Brown significantly hardly ever giving away any himself. Gives away only 1 free every 2 games but earns 2 for every game played. Remarkable.
Daniher stages for free kicks. Always has. Last year the umps realised this after he embarrassed them by throwing himself further than Alex Rance. They’re reluctant to give him a free now and he’s got nobody to blame but himself. Same thing has happened to Rance over the last couple of weeks.
Brown is a very disciplined player who plays a very simple game and doesn’t try to do the ridiculous. He is also more a traditional lead up player than jd and my feeling is lead up players get more frees than the stand and grapple types. Joe likes to sag off and take species. Joe would do well to show a bit more maturity and discipline on field for mine.
True. Unfortunately though it does demonstrate that the umpires have certain biases in play in regards to the players they’re umpiring. I guess that was my point. They umpire different players differently, rather than umpiring teams differently.
My sneaky suspicion with the Langford-Shaw incident vs GWS was possibly that Langford had a hold of Shaw’s jumper too. If that’s the case, no free kick should ever be paid. Unfortunately it is too often, like to Grundy on Sunday.
Agreed. It pissses me off to no end. Umpires are definitely awake to it. Lloyd did it for a while and got fk all thereafter. Just play the ball. Having said all that I feel buddy does it a bit too but seems to still get paid free kicks.
Buddy goes through fits and spurts. Sometimes he gets rapped for no reward, sometimes he gets blown over by a stiff breeze and the umps nearly blow the pea out of the whistle. Reckon it’s more of a specific umpire thing. Gives away a lot and I reckon some umps think he’s pretty undisciplined and subsequently don’t pay him as many.
He greatly benefited from Clarko’s chat with Gils a few weeks ago, can’t remember which game it was but he got paid 3 of the softest frees you’d ever see in the space of 5mins all within 30m of goal. All his Christmases had come at once.
Dreamtime at the G
Rance dives for a free kick.
Free kick is awarded.
Richmond scores a goal 17 points up.
Thereafter our boys are that ■■■■■■ they say ■■■■ it its rigged!
Richmond win the game.
Rances dive is under MRP.
Rance cops 1 week for diving.
This is the ■■■■ that has to stop!
There is a lot of paranoia on here re the aftermath of the saga and how we are still being paid back for our sins. I agree the gutter media whores (purpleflog, Dworm & carocrash) do feed this a bit when something presents (such as Mark Thompson’s problems), but my general feeling is that to the other clubs and key people in the AFL, we haven’t been a good team threatening in finals for so long, we are more irrelevant than a force that needs to be neutered. We have been so soft for so long why would they need to hatch a plan to stop us succeeding? We do that without their help.
There’s an old saying: ‘There are two sides out there, umpire!’ Trouble is of late, the umpires seem to see only one side is out there, our opponent. One would hope that the AwFuL would do something about it so that umpires realise there are two sides and both are equally deserving of free kicks. Trouble is, they won’t!
Having a guess here, but I reckon most frees against Daniher and Franklin are for high tackles, and Riewoldt push in the back, judged purely on how they enter contests. Brown doesn’t often contest ground balls so it makes sense he doesn’t give many away.
Also all four probably dish up more OOBOTF than others.
I heard Glenn James say that the louder he was boo-ed and the more abuse he copped, then he paid more frees against them. And after James Hird called Umpires out, he never got free kicks.
