When Brad Green pulled down Travis Johnstone in the 4th quarter on the wing in front of the Southern Stand, he pulled Jonny down from the neck sleeve. I was right behind it. The boundary umpire saw it quite clearly, as did people sitting on the wing.

Brad Green got the free for holding the ball. Can boundary umpires reverse a decision?

Umpire Jennings. I'd never heard of him until last night. Must be a rookie/new umpire or something.

Not only you.

I checked the umpires section of the AFL 2010 handbook to see if this clown was born in Brisbane (or Scotchmer Street North Fitzroy) and the fact is HE IS NOT THERE.

No Number 24. Looks like he was a ring-in from the Eastern Suburbs league, or something like it.

Agree we benefited from a couple of crook decisions also, but the Bennell mark disallowed, and the free to Fev were both goal-worthy decisions. In other words we were screwed, which makes the result all the more pleasing.

Was the free kick paid against Jack Grimes in front of goal in the third quarter, for holding the ball, the worst decision ever, or just this year?

So many bad decisions it was hard to work out what was the worst, we certainly got more than our Fairshare of wrong decisions but the lions also copped a couple of beauties

So many bad decisions it was hard to work out what was the worst, we certainly got more than our Fairshare of wrong decisions but the lions also copped a couple of beauties

I think the worst one (or lack of one) was Bennell being tackled without the ball and then tripped in the Collingwood game! There were a few shockers in the Collingwood game.

You'll never top James McDonald getting pinged for deliberate against Port in 2007 when we were 5 points (?) down at the 30 minute mark.

He went to handball, caught tackled, it bounced over the line and the arseclown umpire pays deliberate. I lost the plot.

Edited April 25, 201015 yr by Supermercado

There were howlers for both sides,

Exactly I dont why there is all the whinging. Bennell gets cancelled out by Petterd who pushed Travis out at the other end.

When Brad Green pulled down Travis Johnstone in the 4th quarter on the wing in front of the Southern Stand, he pulled Jonny down from the neck sleeve. I was right behind it. The boundary umpire saw it quite clearly, as did people sitting on the wing.

Brad Green got the free for holding the ball. Can boundary umpires reverse a decision?

Of course not.

Umpire No 24 had a absolute shocker!!

Worst performance by a single umpire i have ever seen!!

apologies to Mclaren

Was the free kick paid against Jack Grimes in front of goal in the third quarter, for holding the ball, the worst decision ever, or just this year?

It was the worst decision but it led to one of the best comments I've heard at the footy.

"Caught! @##**## Fevola should be charged for trying to give Grimes aids!"

This 'holding the ball' thing when a player's been crunched and is lying on top of it is utterly laughable. I have a young Chinese friend who has taken a liking to the game and has a fairly good understanding of it now, but he says he can't make sense of most of the free kicks. I told him that neither can I. The Grimes type of decision is the worst, he says, as he can't see how a player with a pack forming on top of him can be said to have a reasonable chance to do anything about it.

The way these pathetic umpires, always peering to see if they can find something to do with their whistles, pick the damn decisions out of their noses just makes me want to do a Basil Fawlty on them, with a garden gnome. This is the problem in a nutshell: the umpires are asked to judge things that are very, very often unjudgeable, but far, far too often they just won't let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak, and insist on pinging some poor bastard with a player or even a pack right on top of him. Instead of seeing if the fellow's safe there at the bottom of the pack, or blowing a balls-up to free him and the ball and get on with it, they just 'sit' on it and peer into the dark, sweaty mess to see if they can identify an effort to push out the ball with the teeth or some such, or lack of same. In other words, allow the pack to form and become a seething morass while you're looking for a player to ping for having no free arms. It's roulette.

Still, they gave us the hilarity highlight of the game by correctly pinging Fev for 50m when he made out he'd taken the mark by shaking the ball in their faces, still lying on the ground, while the player who had taken it was already going back to receive the ball for his kick.

The Grimes decision was a joke, true. However for mine the worst decision of the year went our way last week when Bruce was caught in the midst of bouncing the ball - unbelievable! Really makes you wonder how these umpires are being taught.

Indeed. That one was bad enough to actually make me feel a bit guilty.

The Strauss holding the ball against Collingwood when he successfully got rid of it was pretty bad too.

Bad decisions are only important if they happen at significant times or in significant places. Grimes was stiff. It had the potential to turn the game. Dees were also very stiff with a couple of 'holding the ball' decisions that could have gone against the Lions.

Yep spot on. Its all about the context of the game. That freekick and subsequent goal close to 3 qtr time could have given them all the momentum going into the last quarter. I was pretty concerned at the time that they would come home strong in a close one. Just imagine if a free like that was paid last quarter of the Pies game against them ... they would still be squealing about it & I would still be laughing.

Most costly free against us that I can recall was the Neitz too high on Farmer vs the Dockers... Farmer kicks the winning goal after the siren. It was there but still gut-wrenching.

Umpires make these sort of mistakes all the time. I have seen it in alot of games, don't think it's something that is only reserved for us. On another note, anybody still noticing how having the louder crowd helps?

Yeah, I definitely noticed it. At times i think the crowd willed the umpires into making calls that went the dees way.

There were some howlers, but I think in the end we came out on top and it was like what collingwood are usually the beneficiaries of.

The umpiring was poor, seems like the result of a new ump (#24) and possibly speed of the game. They pretty much evened out - Bennell's disallowed mark, the Grimes tackle, free to Martin, Petterd's mark and a couple of times when Johnstone got tackled round his neck, plus some others. Johnstone kept pointing to his neck but the ump's seemed not to be able to see he had one.

The pleasing thing was how Melb went on with the job, there are things under our control and we attended to them without letting the bad umpiring affect us. That is the sign of some maturity, I thought.

I'm generally as one-eyed as they come, but I've gotta say that I knew the umpire would pay that. Jack made no attempt to get rid of it, but usually they don't pay those in the back half. Obviously, the question is did he have prior, at the time I thought he did, but having not seen the replay, I have little to go on but my recollection. All that said, it shouldn't have been paid, particularly as there was a similar free kick not paid to us at the beginning of the fourth.

What about when Bennell took that mark and wasn't paid because he 'bumped' the lions guy

Firstly the umpire got in their way and then had his back turned to the play, but somehow managed to pluck a free kick.

we were lucky they paid Rickys hands in the back mark on Trapper. You win some,you lose some

Porplyzia took a similar mark the night before, so at least from that perspective it was consistent.

[quote name='big tuna' date='25 April 2010 - 08:15 PM' t

"Most costly free against us that I can recall was the Neitz too high on Farmer vs the Dockers... Farmer kicks the winning goal after the siren. It was there but still gut-wrenching."

Yes Farmer was infringed, but a split second before that he blatantly threw the ball away. That loss cost us a top 4 position, in the long run,if my memory serves me correctly.

Yes, I think Ump 24 was in his first game, but that doesn't excuse him for making provocative calls that cost goals. He obviously has poor judgment, or is ignorant.

Did u see the one where the ball was locked up on our 50 with a pile of players on top of the ball and the ump (Number 7) who was 2 foot from the pile blew his whistle and looked at the other ump 50 metres away to make the decision!!!!!! i nearly wet myself! same ump that gave he decision against Grimes. Won't ump next week if geebag geeshan has any sense.