Good pick up, was not on purpose and yet it strangely works.
Over-complication of the rules is clearly the main problem and whether this causes genuine mistakes or allows subconscious bias to take the decision the wrong way is up for debate. The truth is probably somewhere in between as a whole. The worst part is the umpires boss (AFL) coming out time after time and declaring every weird call ācorrect, becauseā¦ā and everyone just shrugs and forgets it because what the fark can you do when thereās zero interest in addressing the problems from the people in control.
2 Likes
Or my favourite, ātechnically, not incorrectā
2 Likes
I was pretty happy with how the game was umpired yesterday, just let them play. Until we caught them twice holding it, no free and then Kelly gets tackled over the boundary line and gets called for holding it. As said, how can you pay that when you didnāt pay the others?
3 Likes
If the idea is to keep all the umpire sooking confined to one thread, then this is a great idea for a thread.
2 Likes
Do we then need a seperate thread for those people sooking about the umpire sooking?
2 Likes
No, I think weāre fine
1 Like
Aw youāre no fun
I get that a lot.
Remember when tony jones overheard the umps celebrating st kildasās loss to freo in the week when grant thomas criticized the umps, and how it was buried?
5 Likes
I donāt agree re deliberate conspiracy, but do believe in unconscious one that plagued us thru 2013-15, where momentum turning frees were given against us at crucial times, decisions the commentators were appalled by.
This, IMO, was umps making unconscious decision that we were guilty of doping regardless of what AFL said.
I am talking pivotal moments that turned games, and ultimately killed confidence.
I do not believe it is a directive from head office
2 Likes
I think that is basically right. I think there are three issues: Inconsistency, non AFL bias issues resulting from globally recognized phenomenons, and potential AFL bias.
The inconsistency from game to game is almost undeniable, because the distribution of free kicks paid from game to game varies enormously. How is it possible to have a total of 18 free kicks paid in one game, while four other games in the very same round paid more than 40 free kicks? Of course different teams and games have different styles, but that sort of enormous free kick disparity from game to game is very strongly indicative of marked inconsistencies from game to game.
The fact umpires are susceptible to certain biases is also nothing new. Itās well-known and statistically established that umpires favor home teams in front of parochial home crowds - this isnāt specific to AFL, itās a global sporting phenomenon. Similarly, the fact umpires tend to be slightly biased in favor of high performing teams and players is a global sporting and not AFL specific phenomenon, resulting from the cognitive bias known as the halo effect.
Alleging AFL bias or interference with respect to umpiring is clearly the most contentious and difficult theory to prove, but I donāt think itās in the realm of tin foil hat wearers to suggest that the AFL has preferred outcomes in certain games and its umpires are made aware of those prereferences. Even with that said, I would still say umpiring doesnāt change the outcome of the overwhelming majority of games.
It seems to me that the issue is really about consistency in umpiring decisions, and the more maggots you introduce into the game, the variables increase.
I would argue that when there was only one umpire, there may have been free kicks missed but there was a lot more consistency in the flow of the game. I hear the argument that the game is faster and that you need more umpires, but back in the day, there were still very large scores kicked and the ball traveled up and down the ground very quickly, and the umpires had no problem keeping up.
And seriously the crap yesterday of going to the replay for some goals is nonsense. Our game is all about random events and you win some and lose some.
Go back to one field umpire and have as many boundaries and goal maggots as you like .
3 Likes
Are the umps instructed not to personally use replays to decide? One rather overtly waited for the replay of the out-of-bounds near the interchange bench.
2 Likes
IIn order for this to be a well crafter and executed conspiracy there would have to be equally intelligent people running it. And we know they are just not that good.
I think there are three clear that points going on.
-
The AFL are consistently trying to tweak the game and as such use āinterpretationsā to change focuss week to week. You couple this with umpires who are all tired and struggle to keep up with the ārule of the weekā along with inconsistency in applying them across the umpiring fraternity and you have a dogs breakfast. The rules themselves are hard enough to get consistent, let alone when you tweak them regularly. On this one, I feel for the umpires as it must be tough to try and officiate a game where you have to adjust they way you do it week to week. The inconsistency in the rules tweaking is a farking abomination.
-
The AFLs complete and utter incompetent fixation with being correct. We all make mistakes, but to come out and say decisions that were completely wrong are correct for some bullshit reason shows that they donāt understand the problem and have their head up their ā ā ā so much they would rather ā ā ā ā the game than admit they are wrong. This play directly into point 1, and I lay the blame squarely are the self righteous umprires who believe the midweek press release about their perfection. They then go out on the weekend and act like a pack of self righteous ā ā ā ā ā trying to āmanage the gameā. Something that could easily be construed as corruption.
-
If the farking rules committee and the soft ā ā ā ā ā they have had on it. You have a committee they make recommendations, else why weāre they paid. So now we have a room full of people trying to justify their junkets by making up ā ā ā ā to change for bullshit reasons. They make fundamental changes based on direction from a bunch of business people on the commission with no overarching goals. Now because of point 2 when they do ā ā ā ā up they simply create a fix to cover the ā ā ā ā up. So now what we have are plastering over cracks from ā ā ā ā work they did 5 years ago in a knee jerk reaction they used to justify their position.
So now we have a bunch of people who make fundamental changes at the direction of a group of people poorly qualified to make the policy changes, enacted by self righteous wankers enforcing the decision at the whim of their own egos protected by a bunch of self inflated knobs whoās bonuses are probably tied to the last of umpiring mistakes.
No person could design a web of ā ā ā ā like that and pass it off a corruption as not even they know what they outcome could possibly be.
The umpiring has become an unmitigated disaster, and Iām not sure they could ever fix it.
7 Likes
HOW THE ā ā ā ā DID HE GET RID OF IT YOU ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ?!!!
3 Likes
Until they admit or are accountable for wrong decisions in any game they will continue to make wrong decisions in every gameā¦ canāt fix whatās perceived to not be brokenā¦
2 Likes
The one very simple solution is for the AFL to stop ā ā ā ā ā ā ā with the rules.
3 Likes
Had Hosking-Elliot not taken a bounce & been run down by Tippa with 6.5 minutes to go we would have gone an entire half of football without a free kick. The only thing that made the second half umpiring bearable was that we had most of the play so gave the maggots very little opportunity to find frees against us. All in all its one of the better umpired ANZAC days.
2 Likes
Yeah I agree, we also through this time got called to play on from our marks or frees and had our kicks called not 15 way more than any other team.
1 Like