The "FFS umpiring, FFS" thread

Heard someone on radio talking about the bounce the other day. Many promising umpires waiting in the wings but their centre bounce isn’t what it should be so they haven’t been rewarded with AFL games. Sounded to me as though the AFL were thinking about it. Some of the umpires are in favour of the centre bounce being removed.

There is so much that has been changed and included in the game in the past decade or two, its a case of, what comes next?

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In that case we can do the abusing, i.e. people who buy front row tickets must (by law) yell abuse at umpires when they are obviously fixing the match, especially when they are in the vicinity. If you don’t comply, you can swap seats with some deranged drongo on level 3.

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Exactly. Then you’re forced to lick their boots and say you were wrong and made a mistake and that umpires are all fantastic.

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This. Fisher is a deadset disgrace and if he wasn’t part of that joke of a ‘pathway from football to umpiring’ crap he wouldn’t do better than D grade reserves on a Saturday. There are so many awful umps at the top level - and corrupt pr1cks too - but imo none are as clueless as Fisher…maybe that idiot Pannell

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Colleague of mine is in the pathway, officiating TAC Cup and VFL reserves, there’s no shortage of resentment from many of the younger developing umpires over the favourable treatment and opportunities he’s received.
But they’re all bad, to a man.

Yep…not surprised either
Other youngsters grind their way through the ranks for years to even get a look into an afl/vfl list, and yet clowns like Fisher, Bannister and now Carrazzo, who have shown zero umpiring craft previously, get a golden ticket.

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Just goes to show “feel for the game” doesn’t always come automatically with games played.

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I noticed the AFL website segment they used to have about some of the contentious weekly umpiring decisions with umpires coach Kennedy is not longer aired or am I missing something? Anyway it’s a pointless segment when they continually justify bad decisions rather than saying it is an error. Still always good to hear what perverse logic they use to justify decisions. The did admit the Zaka deliberate agains Adelaide was wrong.

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When a team gets thumped by 10+ goals, they’re more willing to admit a mistake because there’s no real impact on the result.

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Spot on - New or lesser players receive no leniency from umpires.

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cant blame the umps for that loss. We are just not good enough!

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From free kicks. Directly.

Not counting the ones they got incorrectly from bad/non decisions.

Not counting the ones we missed from bad/non decisions.

Yes, on this occasion the umpires were responsible for our loss.

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What about the simple skill errors or errors of decision making from our players that cost us directly? Like Zach Merrett trying to outmark Toby Greene in the goal square instead of bringing the ball to ground for Stanton to mop up? Or maybe Tom Bellchambers dropping an uncontested mark in our goal square that he got two hands to? We were out classed by a clinical opponent who took every opportunity.
The umpiring was terrible no doubt and it may have impacted on the contest to some extent but it’s far too simplistic to say it cost us the game. Especially after we were so poor in the 2nd quarter.

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They were poor in the first quarter.

5.3:33.

All bar one of which were there.

And if our ones “that were there” were paid we would have kicked 5 goals from free kicks as well.

Would we? You can’t say that definitively. Of the ~6 blatant ones I counted that weren’t paid only one would’ve definitely resulted in a shot on goal and only one definitely would’ve resulted in a Giants non goal at goal. But there were dozens of moments where we made mistakes that directly resulted in goals.

I think that’s partly it. Sides with clinical disposal that move the ball well probably end up getting a good run from the chumps due to subconscious bias. It probably doesn’t effect the home advantage thing though.

Subconscious bias has a massive impact and you’ll never eliminate that. The problem is more often than not the players have nobody else to blame but themselves for how the umps perceive them. Joe being the perfect example. He’s been getting raped for weeks by his opponents but wont get a free kick as long as he a) keeps berating the umps for not paying them and b) enhances every bit of contact he receives.

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There has to be at least one umpire on the ground that can bounce the ball in the centre surely