Best AFL Umpires. Your thoughts?

[Bobby McKenzie 2,385]

Matt Stevic is a clear winner for mine. Consistent and calm. Simon Meredith not too bad.

[biggestred 5,094]

The ones i dont notice.

[Bobby McKenzie 2,385]

6 minutes ago, biggestred said:

The ones i dont notice.

Good comment. Very true! The trouble is we do see too many umps gaining our attention for the wrong reasons. Have watched Stevic a lot particularly in 2021 GF. A lot! 

[Neil Crompton 5,561]

Best umpires?
Oxymoron?

[loges 6,767]

Before I answer, who is the one that made that advantage call in the last minute of the grand final?

[DeeZone 9,850]

Grrrrrrr.!!!

[daisycutter 29,616]

until the afl rewrite the rules to be understandable it's impossible to rate umpires (other than terrible)

besides, with 4 umpires it's too hard to know which one made any particular decision  

[La Dee-vina Comedia 16,789]

55 minutes ago, daisycutter said:

until the afl rewrite the rules to be understandable it's impossible to rate umpires (other than terrible)

besides, with 4 umpires it's too hard to know which one made any particular decision  

Andrew Dillon has a clear opportunity to forge his own path as AFL CEO here. As he builds up his footy operations team under Laura Kane he should be instructing her to be bold with all aspects of the game itself, including the rules, umpiring and the MRO/Tribunal/Appeal processes. And he needs to act quickly. If he leaves it too long, he'll be accused of being reactionary rather than progressive.

[george_on_the_outer 7,603]

Very easy answer.  

The umpire who blows their whistle to indicate an infringement. 

Too many have learnt that to keep getting paid, by doing nothing, by calling "play on" then you cannot get it wrong.  The pity is they never get it right when needed. 

Stevic is the leader of decisive umpiring by the length of the straight.  And he is consistent with his calls.  That way both players and spectators know where they stand.

Pity is, that he is surrounded by non officiating imcompetents.

[chook fowler 19,459]

Hairy Beitzel.

[loges 6,767]

9 minutes ago, chook fowler said:

Hairy Beitzel.

Glenn James

[Demonstone 22,559]

Ivo Crapp.  He didn't stand for any ... err... umm ... nonsense from the players.

[Deebauched 1,220]

Watched a replay of the 1970 GF a few weeks ago. Only one umpire on the ground  ;Jolley.

Very fast moving rugged entertaining game. Miles better than the slops that get served up almost weekly thesedays.

Jolley managed to keep up most of the time although he did show alot of love for the bluebaggers in the 3rd. Too many umpires on the ground. 3 is more than enough and replace the useless goal line cameras? They wont and i suspect Carlton and Filth will get alot of love from the umpires in 24.

 

[chook fowler 19,459]

Jeff Crouch. Bring him back.

[Rab D Nesbitt 8,367]

Taking unsubstantiated MFC rumours and allegations out of the mix really has seen us struggle for topics to discuss this off season. 

[Superunknown 4,217]

Sawers

[Willmoy1947 4,091]

Struggling to make any pick. Razor for me and leave the topic up for the next GF we win and i'll have a couple more for you.

[Engorged Onion 10,215]

Probably useful to post this here - it's a universal truth of all codes.

"

Ange Postecoglou’s mature response to referee decisions shows up Mikel Arteta’s immaturity

Spurs manager's post-Chelsea comments were a rarity – like Arteta, he is not a fan of Var but was still able to swallow officials' mistakes


There was, all told, nothing much that Ange Postecoglou could argue with when it came to the decisions of Michael Oliver and his team of officials on Monday night in one of the great Premier League games of the season so far, although his post-match analysis was welcome nonetheless.
There is a great interview with Brian Clough from his 1970s heyday when an anxious looking John Motson gets taken apart by the great man over television’s treatment of referees. Motson points out that the pundits in the studio with the benefit of replays do not always criticise the officials – sometimes they praise them too.

“I’m not interested whether it proves him [the referee] right occasionally,” Clough says. “The point is that he [the referee] makes his decisions in five seconds, or two seconds, or one second, in the heat of the moment with 22 players and 30,000 people shouting and bellowing. All I’m saying is that you don’t make that point strongly enough. It should be over-emphasised how hard it is to referee a match.”

It does take people in football of stature to stand up for referees because, simply said, they cannot do it for themselves. They have no militant fanbase upon which to fall back upon, and no scope to do interviews because, as Clough rightly pointed out 50 years ago, the only interest in them would be when they foul it up. And it is a hard job – so hard that more than 48 hours on from Mikel Arteta’s tantrum on Saturday night he was still not prepared to say which of the three possible infringements on offer he thought should have stood against Anthony Gordon’s goal.

Even when managers are not sure why they think the referee might be wrong – or indeed if he is – they still have the confidence to embark on these remarkable diatribes, and none more so than Arteta this weekend.

Football has been diminishing the authority of its referees and assistants for so long that Postecoglou’s intervention was vanishingly rare. He said what so many of his managerial brethren must know in their hearts but find so difficult to articulate. That the referee’s job is made almost impossible by the pressures of players and managers. Not to mention an expectation that Var can solve everything.

What is it about these managers – Jürgen Klopp, Jose Mourinho, Arteta, and many others over the years – that makes them do it? One suspects that it is often reluctant, prompted by an irrational fear that if they do not do so then it might beget more decisions against them. A notion that the only way to control fate is to rail against the day’s referee to ensure the next one is more compliant.
What is it about the club issuing statements in support of their managers in meltdown, as Liverpool and Woolwich have this season? Again, one suspects it is not a task they relish but feel obliged to do. Doing nothing would leave some kind of awkward misalignment between them and the man on the touchline so they take the path of least resistance. One presumes that then someone is deputed to email a list of complaints, or conspiracy theories, to Howard Webb, and he is in turn obliged to make a solemn phone call to “discuss” it. So the whole dismal dance plays out.

‘You have to accept the referee’s decision’ – Postecoglou

It took Postecoglou – who was himself booked on Monday night for leaving his technical area – to break that cycle. “You have to accept the referee’s decision,” he said. “That is how I grew up. This constant erosion of the referee’s authority is where the game is going to get – they are not going to have any authority. We are going to be under the control of someone with a TV screen a few miles away.”

Easy to say of course, when one is, for instance, in a pre-match press conference ahead of a big game against Manchester City on a good run of domestic results. Just as Arteta did on October 6 when, in the aftermath of the Var errors in Tottenham’s win over Liverpool, he said of referees, “we need to give support and understand that mistakes happen”. Those principles did not survive their first contact with a referee’s decision he did not like the smell of.

Postecoglou, by contrast, swallowed it after a 4-1 defeat at home to one of his club’s biggest rivals. Perhaps he considered himself fortunate that Destiny Udogie was not given a red card for what turned out to be his first yellow card – that tackle on Raheem Sterling. Postecoglou is not a fan of Var, as he has said many times since he arrived in the Premier League this summer, although he tends not to blame the people whose job it is to operate an imperfect system.

In case it needs repeating, Var was brought in as a response to television’s coverage of football, not to the game itself. Referees and their assistants had been getting decisions right and wrong since the ball had laces in it and the half-time norm was a restorative Woodbine. The difference in the 21st century was technology that could prove the case within seconds to a global audience who were consequently better informed than the men running the game on the pitch.

That was why Var came in, and of course because television loves a new gimmick to sell its package all over again to subscribers.

Either way, the spirit of what Postecoglou said was pure Clough – the kind of stern good sense that will stand the test of time, and there is a good chance that others will be quoting it in 50 years. Although hopefully by then, someone will have got Var to a point where we can all tolerate its existence.

*read VAR for ARC, or any slow mo replay in the AFL context.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Engorged Onion

[leave it to deever 17,511]

There's one who is particularly hard on Melbourne. Can't stand him. He's been around for a while too. I won't name him. Suffice to say he looks somewhat like a foetus. 

On a more positive note, I don't mind Razor Ray. 

[dpositive 1,665]

i have said for many years that MFC should invite the umpires down to our training session to discuss what we are doing wrong in our tackling or ball handling.

our heads are certainly not sacred as we do not seem to get frees for obviously high tackles. In the back is never paid for us .Both these frees are often paid against us. Is it technique that leads to the random nature of frees?

It has seemed to me that we rarely get the softer free kicks and we often get penalised for infractions that other teams get away with. free kicks are often paid against the run of play when our structures then get stretched.

We alo seem to be asked to play on after marks or frees where our opponents are given much longer time to set up etc. is this technique?

Obviously part of this examination with the umpires would also introduce our players as law abiding and friendly people who just want to be able to perform at their best, confident that they will be rewarded if opposition players interfere with their normal actions.

 

[picket fence 17,170]

Razor Ray, then Stefanovic, then Meredith! 

[Jibroni 5,004]

Umpires make mistakes which I can tolerate but there is a bias in decision making depending on where the game is played, teams and players involved. This is the part that annoys me.

 

 

Edited November 9, 2023 by Jibroni

[Flemo56 396]

Tough job umpiring with our rules. I would hope their all unbiased. As for the best, I have no idea. I do think they all should go too that glasses mob tho.

[Guest]

Two words…

RAZOR [censored] RAY!

He’s not only the best and most consistent umpire, but he’s the most interesting. Yes he loves the attention and he’s a bit of a showoff, but he thoroughly deserves it.

At one of our W games last year we were out on the ground waiting to raise the banner. The umpires always come out first (before the players) and as they came onto the field, led by Razor, and many of them quite young and new to it, we all started to clap and cheer. We were yelling out “Yeah, Raze!” and “Loveya Raze!” He was absolutely chuffed. He flashed us a smile, and a look that said ‘Oh stop it now, except don’t stop it coz I’m loving it.’ 😂

[Guest]

Not a fan of umpires Williamson (#22) and Mollison (#32).