God I love Demonland.
When we were constantly getting smashed and destroyed by umpires, it was because we were second to the ball.
On the weekend, we won the free kick count, yet we can't blame the umpires because we were second to the ball.
There's always some incredible logic on here to defend umpires. I loved the one about the Adelaide umpire that was too scared to pay the deliberate oob because he would've been attacked by the locals. We don't live in South America people!
Yet that same decision, when the suggestion came that umpires are corrupt, was met with a major howling down. In a country with corruption from top to bottom. AFL teams prepared to inject their entire list with performance enhancing drugs. Other sports where players have been convicted of fixing certain outcomes. Racehorse trainers sponsored by major betting corporations. That was deemed to be more unrealistic. I find these behaviours to be quite incredible.
Back to the Collingwood game. Think about this from a footy, snap decision point of view. How would you play the next kick if you'd just been told to play on after taking a mark and not moving off the mark in the slightest? Think about the psychology of what is happening, that's where the game is being changed. Free kick counts can be manipulated easily enough based on where they are paid. Do we get that info? No.
I had data about 4-5 years ago that proved any game could be won by a team having 13 more free kicks than their opposition. 100%. That is no longer the case, and it conveniently coincides with new rules that are extremely difficult to adjudicate.
Stand. Umpire has to watch the man on the mark as well as the kicker. Impossible. Watch what happens in a Hawthorn game.... Their MotM is all over the place. Never pinged. Again I go back to the pies game. In the backline Moore took a mark, goes back, takes 2 steps right, 3 steps left, still no play on call. There's no interpretation there, he's off his mark, twice.
I'd be surprised if the AFL and NRL didn't have the same 'advisors'. They both came up with extremely dubious rule changes around the same time, that can change the game, purely on the ref/umpires discretion. Stand vs set restart.
Surely the AFL knows the game is impossible to adjudicate as it is, yet they keep piling new stupidity on top. Where does it end? And more importantly, why? Tactics evolve on their own.
A perfect example of this is going back to what I think Sue said before with the hands in the back rule. The rule was always no push in the back, until Alistair Lynch was so good at hiding his pushes in the back they had to change it to hands in the back. Now we're full circle and it's back to pushes, yet at every contest, it's less clear which way a free kick should be paid.
Just watched a Euro game between Denmark and Belgium. A Dane goes down in the box and gets carded for diving. Didn't look like a dive, but the replay showed no contact. Dive. Geez those professional refs are the goods.... Ow abou i Gil.
It's a professional sport with millions punted on it annually. It's an absolute farce that umpires aren't professional. It really shouldn't be legal to bet on it. Can you imagine where horseracing would be without professional stewards? It's hard enough to keep the [censored] honest anyway. I worked in a stable years ago, I know.