Time, gentlemen, please!

The news that some punters are suing the AFL over the 2006 final siren fiasco in Launceston is no real surprise. The only wonder is that there haven’t been more similar instances.

The five men backed Fremantle to beat St Kilda in a four-game multi-bet in which their other three legs got up. The bookies paid out on a draw brought about because the Saints scored after the umpires didn’t hear York Park’s then-feeble siren.

The AFL Commission later changed the result to a Fremantle win, and the five punters are seeking the $128,000 which would have been their payout for that result.

Since then, there have been quite a few more timekeeping errors, some admitted by the AFL, some not, and no doubt fans will be able to point to plenty of cases in which they think their team was dudded.

One howler the league has admitted to was in the Richmond-St Kilda game in May this year, when the umpires held up play for a kick-in to be retaken, but the time ticked on for what Tigers coach Terry Wallace reckoned was about 14 seconds.

Richmond youngster Jack Riewoldt was left to take a set shot from outside 50 metres after the final siren, but if those 14 seconds hadn’t been lost he could have found a teammate in a better position. His kick fell short and the Saints won by three points.

Crucial seconds were lost in the Geelong-Fremantle game on Anzac Day and the West Coast-Sydney match in round 11, and in one of the biggest of all clock-related blunders, also in round 11, the first quarter of the Melbourne-Collingwood game went over by a whopping two minutes and seven seconds.

But perhaps the biggest of all timekeeping-related problems is the one that regularly robs patrons of two to three minutes’ playing time – the delay in stopping the clock after a score.

Unlike when the ball goes out of bounds, or the umpire calls for a bounce, when the clock stops pretty much instantly, there can be delays of four, five or more seconds when a goal or behind has been kicked.

This is because the timekeepers wait until the goal umpire signals the score, which isn’t when the ball goes through the posts, but after the field umpire has given the “all-clear”.

In one notable instance, in round 21 of 2007, Port Adelaide kicked the winning goal with seven seconds left, but the clock didn’t stop until only one second remained. A signal by the goal umpire that there has been a score of some sort when the ball crosses the line would solve this problem.

Another grey area is when a player is kicking in after a behind has been scored. Often when he is tardy the umpire tells him to play on, but the clock doesn’t re-start until he actually kicks the ball or takes it out of the square.

In the Carlton v Adelaide game at the MCG in round six this year, Adelaide’s kick-in just before three-quarter time came after a play-on call, and the delay in starting the clock was nearly, but not quite, long enough for a mark by Carlton’s Eddie Betts, within kicking distance, to be paid.

Imagine the outcry from clubs, fans and punters if this happened at the end of the last quarter in a grand final with less than a goal separating the teams.

Law 10.5.2 specifies that the timekeepers should start the clock when, among other things, “the football is brought back into play after a behind has been scored”, and on the surface that justifies delaying the re-start even though “play on” has been called.

But the same law also says the clock should re-start “when the football is obviously in play”. An umpire calling “play on” is pretty obvious for that purpose, isn’t it?

And while on matters related to time, let’s give a big raspberry to Channels 7 and 10 for their game-time displays last Friday and Saturday nights, which robbed viewers of being able to detect any blunders like the ones outlined above.

Seven’s coverage on Friday night, as seen live in Sydney on Foxtel’s Channel 518, ran forwards for the whole first quarter – just over 29 minutes – before being fixed.

And Ten again persisted with its ridiculous practice of giving a “five-minute warning” near the end of the last quarter and reversing the clock’s direction so nobody knew how long there was left to play.

Surely the AFL can insist on all broadcasters using clocks that run backwards, and stop when the official time does, for the whole of every match?

Or perhaps they’re happy to let crucial blunders go undetected, the same way as they’ll undoubtedly ignore the Herald Sun poll the other day that found 81 per cent of respondents chose Tasmania as the site for an 18th AFL team ahead of western Sydney.

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