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It was last Friday night at the MCG and Richmond was in the process of causing the biggest upset of the 2011 season. With only a few minutes remaining in the final term, the young Tigers led the more fancied Saints by six points.
But just when the game desperately didn’t need an incorrect decision to interfere with this unpredictable spectacle, the umpires were there to spoil the party – as if on cue.
Umpire Scott Jeffrey penalised Richmond defender Luke McGuane with deliberately handballing the footy over the opposition’s goal line.
A free kick was then awarded to Saints skipper Nick Riewoldt and he calmly slotted a classy banana goal from the forward pocket to draw scores level.
It was a crucial moment in the game. And the decision wasn’t just wrong – it was avoidable.
A player should only be penalised for a deliberate rushed behind if the umpire interprets the player was under no defensive pressure. However, McGuane had every right to handball the ball through the posts because he had no prior opportunity and was being tackled at the time.
The next morning, the umpires’ department conceded the decision was wrong.
However, it was too late for Richmond and its supporters because the free kick changed the momentum of the game and cost the team a late goal in an already tense final quarter.
There’s a simple solution to prevent similar episodes in the future. The AFL needs to hire professional umpires.
Today, the AFL is a professionally run business. The majority of people who work for it are employed on a full-time basis and dedicate invaluable time and effort to make the game the product it is.
So it’s staggering to note that umpires – the people who adjudicate this great game and play such an important role in how it is run – are on the part-time payroll.
Aussie Rules is an extremely difficult game to adjudicate and it’s not getting any easier with the constant introduction of new rules along with the game’s ever-increasing tempo.
Umpires are now being forced to make more interpretative decisions than ever before.
With the game being played at such a frenetic pace and with so much congestion, particularly around stoppages, they are finding it incredibly difficult to distinguish exactly what is going on.
The McGuane decision is a good example.
Every umpire records and analyses the game they officiate in on weekends. Umpire coaches also attend every game and often sit down with their ‘students’ to discuss decision-making, as well as bouncing, match management and skill acquisition.
In reality though, it’s impossible for umpires to balance full-time work with their demanding weekend responsibilities.
Modern-day umpires have to undertake their game reviews around their full-time jobs. If they didn’t have to do that, more productive work would result on the field.
Umpires today are an intelligent bunch: Brett Rosebury is an accountant and works full-time at Tickemaster’s national office; Steve McBurney is a crime examiner and barrister, while Chris Kamolins is a sales representative for Fisher and Paykel Healthcare.
They may be smart, but they’re not superheroes and they can’t be expected to perform at optimum levels for both jobs.
Adjudicating an AFL game is extremely demanding on both the body and the mind. Unlike players, umpires remain on the ground for the entire match and cover just as many kilometres as players do.
They don’t rotate and only rest at the end of each quarter, meaning their aerobic capacity must be at an incredibly high level.
Mentally, it’s just as tough. While keeping up with the game physically, umpires must remain focused and show immense concentration for the entire match.
They have to judge approximately 1,500 transactions per game and just one wrong decision could ruin the rest of their performance. Not to mention the tens of thousands of supporters they have to deal with, who scream at them from the sidelines.
Footy needs its adjudicators to spend as much time as possible critiquing and analysing their own performances.
However, if the AFL is to introduce full-time umpires, it’s likely the game would lose men of such intelligence and calibre.
Would aspiring umpires be prepared to put their post-football careers in fields like physiotherapy, law or accounting on hold? Would the AFL be able to match the salary of some of the current umpires’ full-time jobs? It’s debatable.
But the league needs to experiment with a few professional umpires to start off with. Then everyone involved with the game will see that full-time umpiring is the way of the future.
When someone works harder at their chosen craft, they improve dramatically.
When a professional musician can’t play a certain phrase in a piece of music, they practice it until they can no longer play it wrong. When a basketball player is struggling from beyond the arc, they shoot three-point shots at practice over and over before heading home for dinner.
The game of AFL has improved dramatically over the past 20 to 30 years because the game’s personnel have signed on a full-time basis.
If umpires join the full-time payroll, correct decisions will become more frequent.
They wouldn’t get every decision right, but they would get the blatantly obvious ones right.
And it would mean us fans leave games of footy with little regret.
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