On 5/23/2021 at 12:17 PM, binman said:

This times a million.

If say umpires were paid 120k a year, with performance bonuses you don't think young men and women who want to be involved in elite sport might make it a career? 

Create a bloody pathway to the professional level and it will help all levels, both in terms of numbers but also talent.

I'm not sure if this is urban myth but I have been a number of times that key metric used for selecting afl umpires is fitness.

 

Double that. Make the pay equivalent to an elite sportsman (in Aus). You'd catch many of those players who aren't quite big enough to make it at AFL, but understand the game. VFL types and fitness fanatics would line up.

On 5/24/2021 at 10:59 AM, Scoop Junior said:

You can try and look for "outs" on why the umpire didn't pay the deliberate, but the truth is he just bottled it and failed to pay the clear free kick he observed.

Doedee was nowhere near where the Crows player handballed to. He got the ball, looked to the boundary, and handballed straight towards it. I'd be surprised if he even knew Doedee approaching from behind his right shoulder. The only reason Doedee was near the ball when it was because he ran after it as it trickled out.

As for the Spargo deflection, I don't believe a slight deflection that is not only unobservable to the naked eye at normal speed but that doesn't change the trajectory or the speed of the ball affects a deliberate decision. And even if it does, there is no way the umpire could have spotted that minor deflection. So even if it was technically correct, which I don't believe it is, it doesn't change the fact that he failed to pay the free kick he observed. The outcome doesn't justify the flawed methodology.

Not sure if it has been mentioned elsewhere but on that final high kick forward before the siren went, Oliver was running back with the flight to either get to the aerial contest or be in a front-and-square position to crumb and gets completely blocked off by Laird. I didn't see it at the time and I can understand that umpire missing this off-the-ball free, but it's yet another one that went against us and further shows how the whistle gets swallowed for away teams in the last few minutes of a tight game.

What about the other two umpires? They can overrule. This is why I like Razor umpiring. Sometimes gets it wrong, but he's never going to squib it.

Seriously I am more mad at Max not being more proactive in the 3 ruck contests after that extremely poor umpiring decision. Poor umpiring decisions happen every game and change the ebb and flow dynamics as with every player mistake. The game is fluid. He had time and a chance to try and do something positive to right things but he didn’t. 

Edited May 25, 20213 yr by John Crow Batty

18 hours ago, D4Life said:

Lever penalised for deliberate, as Crow player shepherded ball out, free and goal.

Spargo done for accidentally toe poking ball out in our forward line!

Crow player smashes handball out of bounds, throw in!

Zero consistency is what supporters hate!

Anyway interstate home teams and Geelong where the fans are 95% plus for the home team get a 3-5 goal benefit from the umpires at home, and particularly in last quarters!

We wuz robbed!

The fact we were very average, is beside the point!

This. Exactly. That effort isolated on its own was as deliberate as it gets even outside of the one point difference and twenty secs left.

Vis a vis the other two calls AGAINST us and it makes it the howler of the year.

Why did it happen?

Constant, Screaming and Booing from crows fans. They do know how to intimidate. 

Wont be the last interstate game where umps have been conned.

Noise cancelling head phones a must and good security for umps home safely.?

17 hours ago, picket fence said:

Fools paradise if you think that will happen

NOT!

Exactly.  We have been the AFL's whipping boy & poor cousin for decades.  Kicked to the curb every season in some manner or other.  Anyone who thinks this couldn't happen in a prelim or GF think again! 

Ok so we need to look in the mirror as we dug our own irrelevancy grave over the decades.  Hence the AFL couldn't care less about a Demon loss to a wrong decision, yes even in a GF!  If it happened again next week or in a PF/GF Gil would just grin his way through it as per usual.

We'll have to earn every kick, mark, goal and win/draw the hard way without any assistance from this mob.  We have no friends in high places influencing Gil & Co either a la Eddy everywhere when he was President.

The only way this might have become an issue would be if there had of been a massive remonstrating by many players some getting in the face of an UMP and incurring a 50 and/or say Big Maxy stepped in as captain in the face of the closest field umpire, grabbed the ball and threw it into the crowd in anger et al!  I say either of those would have been worth it in the circumstances.  You have to make sure that something like that never happens to the club again by turning a massive spotlight on it at the time and make sure it gets replayed over and over for a good week or so taking the spotlight off pretty much all other aspects of the game for at least 3 to 4 days.  Gil would hate that!

A bit like a bully in the school yard.  You have to stand up for yourself big time to make sure they don't come back for more and seriously reconsider their habits.

Ok so that last part probably ain't happening, there ain't too many crazy enough to stand up in this manner, but we seriously lacked leadership at this moment AND...  after the goal by Clarry that put us up by 16, the decision to palm deep in the Crows forward line earlier in the game which cost us a goal and the three decisions to NOT attempt to knock the ball through in any of the final ball up stoppages IMV.

Everyone reacts to pressure differently but more often than not we need our leaders to make the right decisions in these circumstances and the playing group as a whole to step up and remonstrate in a big way when they see a clear injustice happening.  As someone said earlier, it's a bit like a cricket appeal.  If hardly anyone goes up there's little pressure on the ump to make the right call or make a call at all.

Watch the top rated clubs, they often go over the top with their appealing for a deliberate even if the decision is clearly a 50/50 and unlikely to go in their favour or in some cases there's not even a deliberate there at all and everyone knows it yet they still appeal!

A bit too sleepy hollow down at Demonland when these controversial decisions happen.  Even at half time someone was in an umps face from the Crows giving it to them over some earlier decisions as they walked off.  Was that Tex?  Anyone recall this?  Maybe the umps had a little chat during the break fellow minions!   It pays to speak out!

Edited May 25, 20213 yr by Rusty Nails

4 hours ago, Grr-owl said:

Double that. Make the pay equivalent to an elite sportsman (in Aus). You'd catch many of those players who aren't quite big enough to make it at AFL, but understand the game. VFL types and fitness fanatics would line up.

I really don't understand the AFLs hesitation to make them full time. It's not like there wouldn't be enough for them to do ffs. The players are now professional, it's time to bring the umps up to the same standard.

11 hours ago, jnrmac said:

Simon Lethlean from the AFL when they cracked down on deliberate in 2017 said all players must have endeavour to keep the ball in play. 

“It is really a genuine intent to keep the ball in. Players must make every endeavour to keeping the ball in and if they haven’t they are likely to get a free kick paid against them.

The free should have been paid against the Crow player not Lever 

Lethlean's gone and so has his interpretation, it seems. Because that's not the written rule (now or then). But which players? The one who disposed of it, or all players? "Likely" to get a free kick? Even the interpretation needs interpretation.

 

9 hours ago, deespicable me said:

Sure but with the rules as they are at the moment they have to be interpretated. Unless you want to triple the frees being paid. There are quite often 2 or 3 frees at every contest that the umps let go.

You can't get rid of the grey. You have to interpret. When is a free a free. At what point does it become obvious.

The whole point is that the rules have to be interpreted because they're poorly worded and practically create anomalous situations. If the frees were tripled (and I don't think they would be -- if the first free is paid, the other two don't happen), then so be it -- it would reveal the underlying dogs breakfast.

Umpires in the past didn't seem to have such a hand wringing experience as the current mob. I know the game is faster, etc, but that doesn't account for all the amazing clangers we see week in and week out.

 

9 hours ago, deespicable me said:

You can't lock it down. Unless you throw out the rules, strip it back and start again. (which has merit ).

Tightening up the rules would in effect be doing this. (But who trusts the AFL to tighten them the right way? Ruck circle, third man up, deliberate OOB, protected zones ... the only one they've got right is this season's standing the mark and that appears to be an accident given it was untried and rushed in.)

More players appealed than one might think, also we were unlucky that the ball didnt take a slight deviation and go through on the inside of the post.

On 5/23/2021 at 12:15 PM, Scoop Junior said:

Redleg is spot on.

It's not a mistake. It's a clear and obvious free kick right in front of the umpire and he elected not to pay it. Why? He bottled it - he must have known it was a free but didn't show the courage required to pay a potential game-deciding free kick in front of the rabid Adelaide fans. I can tolerate an umpiring error (e.g. missing a hold or a high tackle in a pack of players), and I can tolerate not paying tiggy touchwood frees in a tight game, but you simply must pay a clear and obvious free that you see. It's a clear deliberate under the old interpretation, let alone the new "insufficient intent to keep it in" which is a lower threshold.

And that's not even mentioning the holding the ball against Keays - one of the clearest examples of holding the ball you will ever see. So that's 2 of the 3 umpires on the night bottling it. They melted in the spotlight and allowed themselves to be influenced by the crowd and that's the message that needs to be conveyed. Fat chance of that happening though - all we will get is the AFL giving the "yeah they each made a mistake" and further obfuscating the issue.

 

Well posited comments. It was not just one or two 'oversights' for their own (the umpires' popularity as 'entertainment accessories' with the crowd), the poor decisions occurred one-way all game and one could see it escalating as the game progressed - right up to the final non-decisions of the last quarter. Still, better now whilst we can atone for our own sub-standard form on the night than make such reparations later in the whole season. Carna Dees!

On 5/23/2021 at 4:44 PM, loges said:

Watched it several, times that was my opinion

Same.  There is nothing in any of that that vision to definitively sat he touched the ball.  Just the usual media drivel on the Demons Loges.  Anything to come with a contrary view to the bleeding obvious.

Let them hate away while we keep sticking right up em.

Edited May 30, 20213 yr by Rusty Nails

Which umpire was it and is he umpiring this weekend?

Or ever again?

Nick Murray had insufficient intent paid against him earlier, from within a metre of the boundary line.

It’s been swept away now but I still don’t know how so many people could definitively tell the deflection in the other angle footage. 

The process is flawed, it will happen again.