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Having hosted sports talkback programs for over two decades I can assure you that no sporting officials in this country draw more ire or criticism than those who adjudicate Australian Rules Football.
And having listened to plenty of sports talkback shows overseas I can also vouch for the fact that the airwaves abroad do not carry the same amount of comment and critique as in this country.
It certainly is not predicated on the fact that AFL fans are more passionate about their code than other sporting devotees. But it does speak volumes for just how difficult it is to officiate our indigenous game.
For starters, I cannot think of another sport where a referee or umpire has to actually possess a ball skill. The necessity to be able to bounce an elliptical ball vertically is a challenge not confronted by officials in other codes.
Then there are the laws that govern the sport itself. So many of the individual laws that must be assessed by AFL umpires are highly subjective, perhaps more so than any other ball sport.
What constitutes prior opportunity and hence holding the ball? What degree of interference constitutes a push in the back? How do you accurately decide whether a player has run 15 metres without bouncing the ball or kicked it 15 metres to a mark?
What specific action warrants the awarding of a 50-metre penalty? How much grappling between ruckmen warrants a free kick? At what point has a player taken the ball over the boundary line deliberately?
They are just some of the grey areas that face the sport’s umpires.
One of the great appeals of football – the global game – is the fact that the rules that govern it are far more easily interpreted and fewer in number. The change of style and the way the game of AFL is played nowadays has also increased the degree of difficulty for the men in white (or lime green).
For many decades the sport was basically linear, where teams transmitted the ball in a relatively straight line toward their own goal-line. Nowadays the ball spends as much time going laterally and backwards as going forward, and moves far more quickly.
The rugby codes are, by the nature of their rules, linear or lateral, which makes the referee’s job easier. While the ball is projected backwards in football it is usually not with the same speed as in the Australian code.
This ‘cyclical’ style of football brought with it a whole new set of problems for the game’s administrators.
In 1976 it was decided to increase the number of field umpires from one to two to cope with the fact that ball speed was increasing and the direction it was heading was becoming less predictable. In 1994 they increased the number to its current level of three.
It was believed that this would bring about greater scrutiny of the players who were within the 50 metre arcs at either end of the ground, though many would argue that area of the game has not changed dramatically as a result of the added adjudicator.
Another complication for those with the whistle was the development of flooding, whereby all 36 players on the ground end up in one half, or at times even one third, of the ground.
The drastically increased congestion around the ball and its random and rapid movement has made it hard for umpire’s to be in a position with a clear line of sight to the contest.
AFL administrators complicate things further with the never-ending changes to the sport’s laws.
In the 1980s changes to the laws occurred seven times, in the 1990s it was eleven times, then nineteen times in the first decade of this century and already seven times since 2010.
How many other codes have had such change in a similar period?
The constant tinkering has added new levels of complexity for those chosen to officiate.
All these reasons have made the sport of AFL more complicated to adjudicate than most. But, of course, that will not stop fans from venting their spleen at the slightest opportunity.