Who is going to send these stats to the club’s Football Department? Hird was right back then; when, he had too much to say about the umpires bias and was fined $20,000 and did Community Work for a year. The punishments continue to continue. It is quite disheartening to watch this from afar, I wonder how the players feel about it?
The tackle was dangerous because the Adelaide player’s head hit the ground. It is an automatic free kick. And; Howlett may or may not be reported. The player has a duty of care when tackling to the other players.
What happens if the player tackling knocks himself out? Does the team get a free and does he get reported? (grin)
Within the next ten years I predict all tackling will be banned and it will turn into touch football (or you can only grab their jumper, thereby leading to extremely tight fitting jumpers).
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Add a couple of goals on that also
Furthermore, it will be a game where players exhibit their talents but the outcome is unimportant except to the gambling industry.
Why slog your guts out if you can see the fix is on? Why risk injury going in hard if the maggot is only going to come up with some weird decision that penalizes you and advantages your opponent just because that is their particular instruction that day? Why keep banging your head against a brick wall when you have seen that as soon as your team gets some momentum and looks like threatening the predetermined outcome that the maggots pull some other outrageous decisions out of their Rses to get the game back on track their way.
The smart players will see that they need to do enough to provide a spectacle for the theatre-goers and the TV audience, and to get their contract renewed.
That is the way the game is going. From some performances we have seen, some players may already have worked this out.
Gill (“I have a million tickets to sell” and his mates have moved it from a sport - it is now show biz.
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All you have to do is look at the first goal last night. Everybody in the ground knew the decision was wrong. But it was not reversed.
It set the standard for the night.
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I genuinely lost it with the Howlett free and non goal to Tippa. Stood up and shouted “Hope you get bottled you cheating carnt”, kicked the seat infront of me and exited the ground.
What makes it worse is Hardwick called them out for their cheating yesterday and our coach or club is too gutless to do the same.
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The umpire was in a perfect postion to see Gleason punched it. He had a side on view. Unbelievable. Still we got lucky with the Stewart one a few minutes later probables was that Stewart missed his shot.
The fact that it went about 10 metres should have made the significant touch irrelevant.
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The AFL should consider the issue of free kicks and where they are paid. We all know that some free kicks are worth more than others. Let’s start to report free kick stats as within forward 50, midfield, within defensive 50. That would be a start.
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I reckon Myers was about to belt one of those ■■■■■■ last night
Had a free kick paid against and had to breathe out and calm himself 
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Saw that, was waiting for 50m for demonastrable behaviour.
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Discrimination against the Bombers.
The humps did us over yet again last night — and it wasn’t even necessary, because we were going to lose the match anyway, given our tortoise-imitating midfield. If Pannell and pals had played fair we’d have lost by 2 or 3 goals instead of 7.
However, although they screw us over regularly, there is one player on our team who routinely gets a better-than-fair go from the maggots, probably because of his Mr Clean media image. Everybody likes Captain Doice — hell, even I do.
Check out the match recording: the number of frees he got last night, for being held in particular, was unreal. I’m not saying those frees weren’t there — they certainly were! — but they actully got noticed and got paid… And I don’t recall one free that was given against him, either, by the way.
Doice is the exception that proves the rule
The other side of Essendons struggles with umpires is that we play too fair & by the rules.
We don’t scrag, rarely wrestle, hold jumpers… so when one of our guys does do it theres an immediate whistle & free kick, i.e. we make it easy for the umpires to call it out.
Ruthless sides, like recent Brisbane, Geelong, Hawthorn, Swans sides do it all over the ground, after every mark, stoppage, ruck contest. You can’t play fair and win consistently and win a GF.
Its just low probabilty stuff/not possible.
We have maybe a couple of these players and desperately need more.
Maybe others can help but Walla, Hurley, Hooker might fit this mould. After that I mostly see fair ball players. I think our balance is out of whack.
Think Chris & Brad Scott, Voss, Alastair Lynch, Cameron Ling, Matthew Scarlett FFS, Josh Gibson.
We need someore grunt.
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This. Would never happen thoug because it would allow everyone to scrutinise umpire performance more. It should be where on the ground and which quarter.
Someone has already done it on BB I read it yesterday. I think it was free kicks paid against us during the saga and after.
It was an interesting read.
Exzaccary.
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I know you cant display your displeasure at a game anymore. Watching from the ground in our members area is like watching from the Balcony at the G. You are not allowed to have passion or at least you cant show it. You get shouted down by the ex Melbourne supporters around you.
Anyway…I was surprised by the number of frees Parnel actually paid to us the other night.