Ethan Tremblay

Appreciate the balanced and considered reply. On cricket, don’t the players raise their arms when appealing or when questioning a decision? Under the new rules, AFL players can’t even appeal for a free kick by raising their arms.

You can’t punish an emotional response where there’s no abuse/swearing included. It’s an absolute joke, sport is emotional. Think about the rule, raising the arms in confusion, without any verbalisation, is a 50m penalty. If anyone agrees with that, thinks the game is better for it and that all players will stop doing it, would have survived well in Nazi Germany. Speak up, don’t suppress your feelings, it’s not good for mental health. But don’t instinctively raise your arms in confusion.. far out.

I wouldn’t be surprised if facial expressions are punished in the near future

Given that raising the arms up or outward when questioning an umpires call is penalised, I’ll happily take that bet. As much as people don’t want them to be, players are humans, not robots. People also raise their arms instinctively when confused or puzzled. To police this is bordering cruel. There’s plenty of articles on arm body language, feel free to have a read or don’t.

It’s human behaviour to be emotional and question what you perceive as a poor judgement. Raising or putting your arms out is an automatic response. You can’t just tell people to stop doing it all of a sudden, it’s an instinct. According to the new ‘dissent’ rule, asking an umpire to watch the screen is a 50m penalty. Additionally, the player doesn’t have to stomp his foot or even carry on, simply raising the arms is a 50m penalty. We don’t want the players to be robots, but…..

I’m not sure if this is tongue in cheek or not. You can’t punish someone for being emotional, Scott’s not being abusive here. It’s quite scary to me that people are calling for instinctive emotions (not abuse) to be punished. You can’t bottle up the frustration/emotions in such a high-intensity environment.

The last sentence is absolutely common sense, which unfortunately, isn’t all that common.

I’d suggest it’s because the majority of the umpires realise that a 50 for raising your arms is ridiculous. The kids umpiring at the junior level are going to cop it even worse for enforcing this one. Players are always going to be raising their arms, even when simply asking “what for?” I’ve most definitely said enough about the absurdity of this rule so I’ll leave it there.

If AFL umpires are having trouble with interpreting the rules and enforcing them (80 missed “raised or outward arms” in round 5), what does that mean for the juniors? The problem starts with the AFL, not the players or the supporters. It’s similar to policing, the commissioner and politicians come up with some stupid ideas for the police on the ground to enforce, the ones who enforce the rules/law are the ones who cop the abuse. Don’t make stupid/complicated rules, and people won’t complain (well, they’re people so they probably still will to some degree).

Bit of hyperbole there Bob. People are asking for a bit of consistency, not the “perfect umpire”. The penalising of a player who simply throws their arms up or out (without verbal abuse or swearing) is only going to make the abuse from supporters (at AFL games down to grassroots) even worse. It’s common sense (which may be the reason why some don’t get it now that I think about it…).

Penalise abuse, swearing aimed at the umpire etc but don’t penalise a player who simply throws their arms up or out. It’s essentially an instinctive behaviour that people do in their everyday life when questioning something. I personally dislike the AFL and umpires even more now.

WTF is arms out in a demonstrative manner..?! Seriously, no wonder crowd numbers are down. You can express emotion inwardly, towards yourself but you can’t throw your arms out… [censored] this rule off.

Worst stage I’ve seen, I slowed it down and you can clearly see him jump.

- “they have beaten dogs by 26, suns by 13 , bummers by 29 , port by 32 and gws by 67. we'll get em imo” And they’ve lost to Carlton (25), St Kilda (33), Adelaide (19) and beaten Bulldogs (38), GWS (36). I’d like to know this persons thought process and reasoning.

That was woeful by Hawthorn

You can’t have a rule based on an individuals feelings, it’s ridiculous.

It’s a mystery.

Leon Cameron had the keys to a Ferrari, he just couldn’t drive it.

Lots of talk about our top players but our ‘bottom 6’ or so also do an amazing job. Much much better than the bottom 6 players from any other club, a massive contributor to our success.

I love how we just put our foot down and take over. It’s quite amazing.

“Umpire respect” 😂 far out.

The ball clearly hit the ground first.

De Boers head to body ratio is all out of whack.

How the [censored] was that not a free to Harmes? More front on contact than Petty vs Hogan.

Happens multiple times in every game and is never paid.