The Collingwood cheer squad berate the boundary umpire during the AFL Round 15 match between the Geelong Cats and Colingwood Magpies at the MCG. Slattery Images
The AFL needs to act urgently to introduce neutral umpires for all matches. I was staggered, after being an interested follower of a discussion on The Roar last week about the perceived imbalance of free kicks in games involving Sydney, to discover that no fewer than 20 of the 28 field umpires listed in the league’s official guidebook are based in Victoria.
Yes, that’s right: more than 70 per cent of the men in control of a supposedly national competition come from one of the five states involved.
Of the remaining eight, four are from Western Australia, three from South Australia and one from Tasmania, with none from either Queensland or NSW.
One of the Victorian umpires did spend some time serving an “apprenticeship” in the AFLQ before being appointed to the AFL panel, and another began his career in Tasmania before moving to Victoria more than a decade ago.
This is an outrageous situation.
Let’s be clear, nobody is suggesting any umpire consciously cheats.
But that’s not the point – it’s all about perception, a vital factor when it comes to gaining and keeping the confidence of the people who fork out good money week after week in the hope that their team will get a fair go.
It’s an undeniable fact that young Victorians who end up being umpires have almost invariably spent their childhoods barracking for one of the (too) many teams in their home state.
And with the belief that the only true home of the code is Victoria – an attitude they must find hard to overcome, no matter how hard they try, when they get control of a whistle at the highest level.
This is an area that other football codes have addressed successfully.
Soccer has neutral referees for all meaningful international matches, so if Australia is playing Qatar in a World Cup qualifier the ref could be from somewhere like India, Iran or Singapore.
An even more stringent policy is the order of the day for international tournaments like the World Cup finals, where the officials must come from a different confederation from the two teams involved.
Rugby union events like the Six Nations and the Super 14 also have neutral referees, and even in Sydney-centric rugby league, Queensland refs have been used going back as far as, and even further than, the late lamented “Grasshopper”, Barry Gomersall.
The AFL will no doubt say there are two reasons it can’t use neutral umpires – it will say there aren’t enough of them of the required standard outside Victoria, and it will bleat about the extra expense involved in sending umpires from Sydney or Brisbane to Perth or Adelaide.
If the first of those two arguments is true there is only one place to lay the blame, and that’s with the AFL itself.
And as for the second, it’s rubbish.
The AFL is a big enough, and, as it continues to remind us, wealthy enough, organisation to overcome both these hurdles, with training programs for the first, and an adjustment of spending priorities, and/or appropriate sponsorship, for the second.
Games between teams from Victoria and South Australia need to be umpired by officials from WA, SA, Queensland and NSW, and so on.
The only time Victorians should officiate in matches involving interstate teams is when they’re playing each other, such as Adelaide v Sydney or Brisbane v Fremantle.
Until that happens the perception will remain, regardless of the reality, that it’s Victoria v the rest, rather than a truly national competition.
Particularly while the AFL persists in its stubborn refusal to include a Tasmanian team, instead leaving the state off the agenda, just as it has been regularly left off maps of Australia for countless years.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, so to speak, two pertinent things emerged from round three – St Kilda might at last have become a credible contender, although I’m still reserving judgment until closer to the business end of the season; and Richmond’s terrier-like first quarter exposed some glaring deficiencies in the Western Bulldogs’ structure, although the Tigers didn’t have the skills or the endurance to go on with it for the rest of the match.
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April 14th 2009 @ 4:32pm
Gruffalo said | April 14th 2009 @ 4:32pm | Report comment
Kurt
Rubbish.
With a fair share of possession, the Swans in the last 5 years have been a very fast-flowing attacking unit. You don’t win a flag, miss out on another by 1 point, purely through tackling.
The reason the Swans tackle a lot is because 6 free kicks in a row means you have no choice. It is also ignorant to think that, with a potent forward line, Roos would rather deprive them of potential attacking opportunities just to “scrag” the opposition.
fact is – if Barry Hall, O’Loughlin, O’Keeffe, Kirk were paid teh same respect by umpires that Lloyd, Riewoldt, Judd receive – with the extra possession and added momentum, then the Swans would be crushing opponents instead of being forced to make belated comebacks all too late.
April 14th 2009 @ 4:33pm
Bruce Walkley said | April 14th 2009 @ 4:33pm | Report comment
Transplanting Qld and NSW umps to Melbourne would only breed more of the same. Perhaps the solution would be to give them a couple of years in SA and WA, then promote the best to the AFL panel. More to the point, though, than NSW and Qld representation, is why traditional football states SA and WA are so under-represented. There must be more than three AFL-standard umpires in Adelaide and more than four in Perth, surely?
April 14th 2009 @ 4:40pm
Gruffalo said | April 14th 2009 @ 4:40pm | Report comment
I would demand that any umpire declare the teams they supported as kids and adults PLUS any affiliation e.g. memberships.
I would also have a match review for the Swans – and should the consensus be that the umpires disadvantaged Sydney to a particular degree, they will be forced to 2 rounds with Bazza – bare knuckle.
What an incentive for fairness that would be.
St Kilda and Essendon could attempt the same with Riewoldt and Lloyd respectively – but that would inspire mirth more than trepidation. In fact, at the end of Round 1, Lloyd would expect the umpire to hand him the fight – and Riewoldt would keep falling over and claim “tunnelling”
April 14th 2009 @ 5:00pm
Kurt said | April 14th 2009 @ 5:00pm | Report comment
This is a quite bizzare discussion and I really don’t know if Bruce and Gruffalo are actually serious. It’s one thing to believe the umps are out to get your team during the game, it’s another thing entirely to argue they are the subject of systematic bias based on no more than a half-baked theory about Victorians’ sub-conscious desire to punish those from interstate. Some Collingwood fans still believe they were robbed of a premiership against Brisbane a few years back, how does that fit in within this ridiculous idea about ‘neutral’ umpires? Presumably if the umpires in that game had been from the inner-north eastern suburbs of Melbourne the Pies fans would be ok with the result???
Really, get a grip people. If this is what passes for informed AFL discussion on The Roar no wonder the site is dominated by Rugby and Soccer fans.
April 14th 2009 @ 10:16pm
jimbo said | April 14th 2009 @ 10:16pm | Report comment
Most of the players in the Swans and Lions are Victorians anyway.
I watched a few Swans games and never thought any of the umpires were favouring the opposition and in fact thought they were helping the Swans to win a premiership or two.
Some of the decisions are a bit baffling anyway and can go either way when people start throwing themselves around in the rucks and scrambles.
April 14th 2009 @ 10:43pm
Albert Ross said | April 14th 2009 @ 10:43pm | Report comment
Where is Michael C with his inexhaustible fount of statistics now that we need him?
April 15th 2009 @ 8:21am
Redb said | April 15th 2009 @ 8:21am | Report comment
Gruff,
hehe…Barry Hall in a bare knuckle fight – err no thanks.
Amazing that non Victorian clubs start whinging about umpire bias when two Vic teams win the last two premierships.
Where did the previous 6 premierships come?
2001 – Brisbane
2002 – Brisbane
2003 – Brisbane
2004 – Port Adelaide
2005 – Sydney
2006 – Wet Toast
Gruff, I’ve seen Matthew Lloyd up close a few times, he’s a big bloke, don’t be fooled by the Hollywood looks, when he tackles the player stay hit. Riewoldt on the other hand is a big sissy girl.
Redb
April 15th 2009 @ 2:08pm
Gruffalo said | April 15th 2009 @ 2:08pm | Report comment
Redb
the difference is that Hall, O’Loughlin, O’Keefe do the same but umpires find free kicks against them.
May 31st 2009 @ 4:41am
Max said | May 31st 2009 @ 4:41am | Report comment
The bashing Sydney is dealt with by Vic. umpires is a disgrace to the national game.
Whenever Sydney get a run on and gains momentum in a game the umpires
particularly McLaren and McBurney award dubious and soft free kicks 3 or 4
at a time to the opposition which effectively stops the flow and momentum of
Sydney.
May 31st 2009 @ 11:54am
Dianne said | May 31st 2009 @ 11:54am | Report comment
Inconsistencies of umpiring between teams should be dealt with outside of the AFL due to betting accountability. It is also hard to attract new viewers to the game when the interpretations of the umpires make for irritating confusion.