Video footage shot from too far away, at inadequate frame rates and from useless camera angles plagued the AFL’s score review system in 2012. Get used to it, because plenty more of the same is coming in 2013.
Forget the official AFL spin about ‘improvements’ to the system. By still relying solely on broadcaster Channel Seven for footage, the league will again subject fans, players and coaches to a repeat of the often pointless, contentious or confusing delays to the game they had to groan through last year.
Yet there are two obvious solutions to this problem.
One is to install more cameras at AFL stadia and in better positions, with a certain number of these cameras to film at higher frame rates. How hard can this be?
Sure, last year a couple of blatant behinds awarded as goals were smoothly overruled, and yes, calls upstairs to check whether kicks hit the post, came off knees, were touched on the line or off the boot worked well enough – WHEN clear footage was available.
Too many times it just wasn’t.
Players, umpires and goalposts all took turns at blocking vision, and too many times the truth of the on-field action was lost to the gaps between video frames or to low-quality, ‘inconclusive’ footage.
With at least two high-speed/super-slow-mo cameras in both goalposts – one at just above ground height, one about two-to-three metres up each post and facing inward – unimpeded vision for most goal-line decisions would be more or less guaranteed.
And for those cruelly quick snaps, which embarrass goal umpires by giving them no time to line their head correctly behind the ball, how about installing another camera at each end directly above the posts facing downward and well out of the way of the highest kicks?
A fixed variant of spidercam would do the trick nicely.
Something similar would have been handy in last Friday night’s season opener between Adelaide and Essendon.
The review vision of Graeme Johncock’s goal in the second quarter left everyone none the wiser as to whether his kick had hit the post because it was filmed at two unsuitable angles from too far away, while the gap between video frames meant viewers and the umpires missed the vital milliseconds where the ball may or may not have grazed the post.
But it did manage to stop the game for a minute or so. What an annoying, frustrating waste of time – not unlike listening to coaches whinge about caps to interchanges.
More hair-tearing hold-ups to our game could be avoided if we simply dumped the review in situations where the goal umpire wants to signal a goal but other umpires insist the ball has been touched further upfield.
The limits of camera technology in determining finger or boot contact from any distance greater than the length of the goal square mean whatever the on-field umpiring team agrees on at the time should stay. Keep the game moving.
Surely the AFL don’t want to go the review-riddled, stop-start way of cricket or the NRL?
Sports fans who think waiting for reviews on umpiring decisions adds extra theatre need to get out more.
Any game which requires that kind of ‘excitement’ is in some kind of serious trouble and needs a major overhaul. Australian rules football is exciting enough.
Oh, and that second solution? Put two goal umpires at each end. Crazy, huh?
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