The point being, in this case, the umpire made contact with the player, not the other way round. As I said previously, coaches will instruct players now to use the umpires to set a "screen". This is a joke.

Unbelievable. That contact was minimal, and was made to look worse because the umpire fell over. Sad times.

The whole umpire contact issue this year has been the biggest joke.

Umpires desperately need to toughen up and stop stealing the focus from the game itself - they're there to adjudicate the game, not create major parts of it.

Soon it’s going to get to the point where players need to give more attention to where they think the umpire, not the ball, may be moving to.

Only when the AFL stops this weak rubbish (eg. ‘The players have a duty of care to the umpires.’ – what a joke) can people begin to, in some form of the word, respect the umpires.

Umpires (and perhaps the rules) need to go back to the way they were:

This is the way it should be.

Great link. That's the way it should be - the contact was accidental, no-one was hurt. The player had the common decency to help the ump up and check that he was ok. Incident over. Now you would be too scared to offer to help them up, because that is touching them too!

While I agree that the players have a duty to be careful around the umpires (they would be a lot fitter and heavier than the umps and could do some serious damage in a hard collision) a simple accidental touch should not be a big deal. Particularly if the umpire is moving towards the player, and the player fails to get out of the way. In that case, it is actually the umpire who touches the player, the player has not made contact with the player.

Umpires (and perhaps the rules) need to go back to the way they were:

This is the way it should be.

Agree. They can wear white too.

when was the last time we contested a decision and got off or got it reduced?

when was the last time we contested a decision and got off or got it reduced?

I remember Tingay got off chraging Peter Dean back in 1998 I think? hehe.