There's no such thing as a perfect advantage rule

I think that the Advantage rule needs to be changed. My suggestion is that if the ball travels more than 15 metre's after a player takes advantage of a free kick, then play continues, but if a player plays on but immediately get's tackled then the free kick should be taken. That way at the very least, the team who get's the free kick has possession. There have been too many advantages been turned over and teams losing possession and getting goals kicked against them when the players have stopped moving. Come on AFL, get wise.

I don't believe the advantage rule will ever work well in AFL because there are too many factors that make it difficult to judge, much of the time, whether a team has advantage. Now, for starters, the AFL is kidding itself if it thinks it can have an advantage rule that involves the umpires blowing the whistle. Blowing the whistle goes completely against the logic of an advantage rule - players are trained to play the whistle. When they hear it, naturally they stop. This season we've seen the team with possession knowingly play on in some advantage situations, however that is unfair on defenders who know they must stop no matter the situation (or risk giving away a 50m penalty). But IMO it is never going to work in AFL anyway. Why? Compare all you like to sports like rugby and soccer - the advantage rule works in these sports because it is much easier for the officiator, at a glance, to assess whether a team has advantage. This is because teams attack in straight lines. It is not difficult to notice whether a team has a good overlap or not, whether they have the opposition outnumbered etc. The umpire can pay advantage in good faith. However in AFL, you can have 20+ players surrounding the ball. Add to that the shape of the ball and the fact it can hit the ground and reverse a situation at any moment. While in some situations it may be obvious that an advantage is there (eg a two on one on the wing, for instance), many other times it is surely too difficult for an umpire or player to assess whether they actually have advantage or not. It might be easy to do it from the comfort of a chair with a nice camera angle showing half the field, but at ground level surrounded by a couple of dozen blokes? Not as easy. If you can't call it every time with confidence, it shouldn't be in the rules.

This seems a sensible solution and there is already a precedent in the game with the way a shout and raised arms indicate the umpire has called 'play on' . As in rugby this also gives the umpire the option to blow the whistle and call play back for a free if there clearly is no advantage - ie if Pendlebury had been immediately tackled. The time an advantage could run before being called back or expiring would however have to be much briefer than in rugby.

I have no idea what you're referring to and it clearly has nothing, and I do mean nothing, to do with this thread. The mods should delete this post.

Gee, but the AFL goes pretty close to the perfect advantage rule with the recent "Football codes winning war on drugs" in which the AFL's pathetic 3 strikes drugs policy was described so glowingly. It even stated incorrectly that no AFL players had been tested positive in the past 12 months. The NRL got minimal mention despite the fact that no NRL player has tested positive in the past 12 months. So a headline that should have accurately read, "NRL winning war on drugs"is turned into another positive story for the AFL with a tiny clarification a few days later. Good one News Ltd. Typical really.

This change to the player making the call, in practice, is a very marginal change from what we had already, as we can see from the Pendlebury case. I don't see an easy answer, which ever way you dice it up, problems are bound to occur where you have a situation where the umps blow the whistle, and players instinctively stop, effectively manufacturing an advantage for the player with the ball. Knowing whether to play on or not requires the player turning towards the ump (which might be dangerous), or taking a punt and risking 50m. Even if we instruct the ump to hold of whistling for a second (and in our game, it can't be any more than that), you still come across potential conundrums. What if the ump didn't stop play and Pendlbury had missed? Has the advantage been taken or not? I expect if that had been the outcome, we'd still be listening to pies fans complaining about the rule. Another conundrum, using the Pendlebury example again, it's all happening in a split second, everyone stops, Pendlebury grabs the ball and makes a decision to not play on because the free is 40 m out, he relaxes, in the meantime, an opposition defender uses that split second to bury Pendlebury, afterall, he might well play on, who knows? In our game, stacks can happen inside that split second - it's a much, much faster game to all other football codes (with perhaps the exception of Gaelic football). It's asking a lot of both umps and players to get it right in a split second. There is no straightforward solution which ever way you look at it. In the Maguire call for not blowing the whistle, I still see problems: 1. there's still a need for the ump to decide if an advantage has been taken or not, e.g. does it come back if Pendlebury misses? 2. the Geish is right that players get narky if the whistle isn't being blown, and before we know it, you get a situation where the whistle could have been blown three times inside two seconds as the ball ricocheted around, and then which advantage are we up to? Perhaps we accept that the advantage rule at stoppages is just too fraught with danger, too much happening, too congested, that the ump is correct to have the starting position that the player is better off taking the free, because, once again, you can't have a situation where a player with the ball relaxes, while another comes in ready to bury him or shirtfront him.

The advantage rule in every football code is a problem except maybe soccer.

I reckon the problem is two-fold. First, the reason the ump didn't allow advantage on Friday night was because he had blown time-on, meaning the clock had stopped and play could not continue. What this raises is the fact that umpires (for years now, not just last Friday night) are way to quick and keen to blow time-on. Why is it necessary to stop the clock half a second after a free kick has been awarded? Just let the bloke give the ball back to the recipient of the free kick and let the clock run. Sure, if the ball ends up miles away with no advantage then call time-on while it gets relayed back, but otherwise just let it go. The second, and main, reason is that the league has become far too harsh on 50 metre penalties when a player unknowlingly plays on when the opposition has got the free kick. Let's face it, free kicks are a dead set lottery most of the time and THAT is the reason why the players all stop when they hear the whistle. They are afraid that if they don't they'll get pinged 50 metres either for playing on or for tackling the bloke who has been awarded the kick. A bit more common sense around it and players wouldn't be so confused. Initially, Eddie's idea of letting it go without a whistle and then calling it back if there's no advantage sounds appealing, but I reckon it'd mess around with the continuity of the game way too much and there would be too many meaningless passages of play which eventuate to nothing.

If Jeff Gieschen concedes advantage should've been paid, that's a huge indictment of the rule itself. If the whistle had not been blown, Pendlebury would almost certainly have been tackled before even kicking the ball, by Mackie at least. In other words, it was only the whistle, and everyone else stopping, which enabled Pendlebury to have the shot.

I agree! The problem is ,when they blow the whistle, players pause or stop because, as the old saying goes you must "play the whistle." When the whistle is blown the second time none of the players are sure what is happening. The whistle should only be blown if the umpire wants to halt play.

Benz - problem with this is that the rugby codes have "lines" across the pitch. so there is an advantage line. In Australian football territory is not as important and can't really be measured by an advantage and advantage over rule. The umpires already use a hand signal for advantage but the players are only really looking at the umpires when the play has stopped by virtue of a whistle. We all think the advantage rule in rugby is ideal and works brilliantly - its just so hard to enforce in a non territory based game. I think your suggestion could however work with the way the old rule was - umpire calls advantage, player takes advantage, if its no advantage then it comes back to the original infringement, but again as you point out it would be an adjustment for supporters to accept that a kick could still come back if advantage was paid and the player stuffed up its use.

Maybe umpirers could take inspiration from the rugby codes in which an arm signal is used to control advantage instead of the whistle and if genuinely nothing comes of it then it can be called back. There should be a guideline for the length of advantages but one would think to the next kick or quick 1-2. I understand fans may be reluctant to see their teams being called back but clearly when the whistle is used to halt play then it isnt really a situation in which it is satisfactory for players or umpires. It might take a while to get used to but if it became a long term part of the game then I think one would see it as a marked improvement. The simple call of advantage playing and a hand signal to determine the side to whom it belongs. This way eliminates ridiculous fifty metre penalties. Again in rugby when a player in posession against advangtage continues it, the orignal penalty isnt increased but it is simply enforced.

clearly it's not working. it's not a bad idea in general play but around stoppages in particular the players have no idea whose free kick it is so of course they're going to stop. Gerard Healy's been making the point that the problem is the whistle. it's the only game where the umpire blows the whistle when signalling advantage. i'd like to see a rule where umpires don't blow the whistle for advantage but just yell it out, like in most sports. Now of course if there is no advantage then blow the whistle to signal a free kick. though this sort of change would be best trialled in the NAB cup so going back to the old rule, at least in the interim, would be the right idea.

It's a mess if the umpires dont have a clue. I'd scrap it and go back to the old rule it created its own problems but less so.

In the first quarter there was an iffy free paid to Travis Cloke against Josh Hunt. Geelong played on thinking it was theirs, got pinged 50 and travis cloke kicked a goal. There were also a number of times when the umpires (in particular Chamberlain) waited for a few seconds before blowing the whistle when play had gone on and on some occasions had broken away from the contest. I don't disagree with the rule, but it would seem everyone is still learning how to use it best.

The Advantage rule is not in the player's hands if the umps still have the ability to call it back or blow the whistle. For those Pie fans who think you should have won, remember all the players bar Pendlebury stopped due to the whistle.